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What’s all the fuss about health data?

💡 This article is reprinted here from Iagon corporate blog.

In case you haven’t heard, Google is being sued in the UK for allegedly using medical data of the National Health Service and affecting the privacy of at least 1.6 million people in Great Britain. One of the claims is that the personal data of the people involved was used without the knowledge or consent of data subjects, thus violating several of the principles of data protection regulation.

According to Sky News, the data was used in the course of “testing a smartphone app called Streams.”[1] The purpose of the app was to detect acute kidney injury. While reasons behind the use of such data might seem praiseworthy, it can be argued that the company developing such an app is ultimately profiting from abusing people’s personal data.

The importance of health data

It’s worth noting we’re not talking about, so to speak, standard personal data. This is about one of the most sensitive types of personal data, medical records. The GDPR and most privacy regulations around the globe treat this kind of personal data as a special category that requires the highest level of protection.

But what is health data anyway? Is it the diagnosis that you get from a doctor? Or, perhaps, a vaccination certificate? Well, the topic is rather complex and there are no simple answers. Let’s start with the definition provided by GDPR.

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