The Avicenna Alliance publishes a brand-new position paper on AI & Big Data while providing feedback on the European Strategy for Data.
We are proud to announce that on 29 May, the Avicenna Alliance has submitted Members’ feedback to the European Commission’s public consultation on the European Strategy for Data. While providing Members’ feedback to the Commission’s survey on Data, the Alliance has released a brand-new position paper on “AI and Big Data effective readiness, a privacy-enhancing pathway to data access” which has been developed by members of the Avicenna Alliance from medtech, pharmaceutical, software and life science industries and scientific community from academia. This position paper applies both to the Public Consultations on a European Strategy for Data and the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence and constitutes the starting point for a much-needed discussion on how the policy framework governing AI & Data in the health care sector.
On 19 February 2020, the European Commission published an ambitious policy package, including the European strategy for data and the White Paper on artificial intelligence aimed at making the EU fit for the digital age. Following the publication of this new policy package, the Commission launched a consultation period to gather views from stakeholders on its European Strategy for Data until the 31 May to help share the future policy agenda of the EU data economy.
The Avicenna Alliance Members welcomed the European Data Strategy and its various references to the promising opportunities brought by health data for personalised medicine and the benefits and advances that computer modelling and simulation technologies can bring in healthcare. It was therefore essential for them to provide their feedback to the European Commission through the public consultation because their input will feed into future European initiatives on the access and re-use of data.
Twenty-first-century medical research and product development heavily rely on healthcare data, which include, but is not limited to, diagnosis, lab results, medical imaging, computational representation of anatomy and physiology. The Avicenna Alliance recognises the importance of patient privacy and data security. Nevertheless, Avicenna Members highlight that there is mounting friction between technology solutions and regulatory constraints which makes effective data sharing in healthcare still very rare and conditioned by high transaction costs. Although available data is continuously expanding, it largely sits idle, fragmented in silos, and the advent of big data and AI environments is still remarkably delayed in European healthcare systems.
The position paper can be found here.
The feedback provided by the Avicenna Alliance to the European Commission can be found here.
