BC Platforms’ key takeaways from the European Health Data & Innovation Summit 2025
The recent summit was held on 30th January in Warsaw, Poland, where representatives from key European institutions, the public sector, and the private sector assembled to discuss innovation and challenges related to EHDS.
Experts cautioned that hospitals within the European Union (EU) are already at risk of falling behind in the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) if they do not start the process soon.
The recently approved EHDS – the European Health Union’s first common data space – aims to protect and streamline the use of health data. It is a mandatory requirement for all healthcare institutions within the EU. The EHDS readiness timeline is moving quickly, with foundational requirements due soon and full compliance by 2028.
With EHDS-Ready solutions that are designed to help healthcare institutions navigate the complexities of the EHDS landscape, BC Platforms also attended the summit, represented by Timo Kanninen (CSO). Part of the Summit included the TEHDAS2 project stakeholder forum, which the Company has been involved with. TEHDAS2 aims to prepare the ground for the harmonised implementation of the secondary use of health data as part of EHDS implementation (finalising in 2026). BC Platforms, with its R&D site in Espoo, Finland, has actively engaged in developing the TEHDAS2 universal set of guidelines and specifications. Furthermore, it has been contributing to the development of cross-border research projects within the initiative.
Here are the key takeaways from the TEHDAS2’s joint action:
- Looking at current progress, Finland, followed by France, currently leads in terms of EDHS implementation.
- Current results suggest that the project is proceeding well. The first set of TEHDAS2 guidelines and technical specifications have now been released for public comment and more will follow before summer. The challenges being faced are data digitalisation, integration and harmonisation.
- The focus of member states has been to establish Health Data Access Bodies (HDABs), hospitals lag behind university hospitals where data-sharing collaborations and systems exist. Given the short transition time for a project of this magnitude, unpreparedness potentially puts them at risk of overload in terms of the volume of data requests and access handling capacity requirements. This could, in turn, also cause delays in local and national query handling.
Check out our easy-to-understand EDHS Readiness Guide to understand more about how current EDHS implementation affects your institution and what you need to do now.
Our EHDS-Ready Trusted Research Environment (TRE) provides a hardware-agnostic solution that can be used with both local and national secure data environments – harnessing automation capabilities and AI-based tools to support institutions’ EHDS digital healthcare transformation.
