Débat : Les données de notre santé doivent rester confidentielles

Google English: "Debate: The data of our health must remain confidential

Author: Anne Lécu (Doctor, co-director of the department of biomedical ethics, research center, Collège des Bernardins)

Access to Health Insurance data or hospitals, even anonymised, is a risk to privacy. 

Where are the data we produce when we treat? The names and the quantity of the medicines we take at the pharmacy, the acts performed by the nurse or the doctor when we go to the emergency room? Who uses them, and how?

The general movement for open data, or open data , is being strengthened, with a view to transparency and especially progress for public health research. It aims to better prevent health crises, for example by identifying as early as possible the adverse effects associated with a drug.

The current system makes a lot of health data public, after making them anonymous. Nevertheless, there is the question of their real confidentiality. This is one of the topics currently debated in the Estates General of Bioethics, notably through the online consultation open until 1 May. "How to reconcile seemingly contradictory goals of privacy and contribution to the collective interest? ": Any citizen can post his proposals on this theme .

The reimbursed care via the Vitale card, the acts performed in the hospital

The principle of open data is to make available to all citizens data relating to public life. Those on health are part of it. Many are from reimbursements of care via the Vitale card and the coding of the acts performed in the hospital. They are already fully integrated into one system, the National Interregime Disease Information System (SNIIRAM). Another system, the Medical Information Systems Program (PMSI), also offers a very rich file, containing data on the resources and activity of health care facilities...."