Click here to discover the 5 major changes
The European Health Data Space (EHDS) offers significant benefits for citizens, healthcare providers, and society as a whole. Citizens have easily access to their health data, gain greater control and better digital insight into their own health data and can share it more easily with healthcare providers, even across borders. This improves the continuity and quality of care.
For the healthcare sector, the EHDS ensures better data exchange and interoperability, leading to more efficient processes, fewer duplicated tests, and more personalized care. In addition, the controlled reuse of health data enables high-quality research, innovation, and data-driven health policy, with strong safeguards for privacy and security. In this way, the EHDS contributes to a more modern, accessible, and sustainable healthcare system in Europe.
1. Change 1
Use of a common semantic data standard
There will be a common semantic data language to link different names for the same medical condition into one single diagnosis code. For instance, one doctor writes "pleural cancer" in the Electronic Health Record (EHR), while another doctor writes "mesothelioma" and even another doctor writes "asbestos cancer". This means 3 different names for the same condition!
Thanks to an universal semantic data standard in the background of the patient’s EHR, the different names are linked to one unique diagnosis code. This semantic standard ensures that the content and meaning of the information remain consistent, so that two doctors understand exactly the same thing when they see a specific code. Therefore, doctors not only speak the same language within the country’s borders, but also beyond them, given that the standard code is universal and language-independent. This means all related data, both within national borders and abroad, is connected and datasets are more accurate and complete. This stimulates the cross-border exchange of health data.
