BIG DATA IN HEALTH IOE IN EMERGENCY SITUATIONS: BETWEEN THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY AND DIGITAL HEALTH INNOV A TION

The unprecedented use of digital technologies in healthcare in the past five years in Europe has led to increased concerns regarding individual privacy and data protection. The increased use of digital health technologies in the past three years on the European continent due to the Covid-19 pandemic has exasperated these concerns, especially considering the processing and management of personal and sensitive data by public authorities in various Member States. These concerns raised a question on how individual and group privacy and related data protection rights can be adequately ensured in sensitive healthcare situations, such as a public healthcare crisis.
The chapters of the thesis pursue an answer to this question, focusing on a limited variety of selected themes in EU privacy and data protection law. Chapter 1 sets out the general introduction on the research topic. Chapter 2 touches upon the methodology used in the research. Chapter 3 conceptualises the basic notions from a legal standpoint. Chapter 4 examines the current regulatory regime applicable to digital health technologies, healthcare emergencies, privacy, and data protection. Chapter 5 provides case studies on the application deployed in the Covid-19 scenario, from the perspective of privacy and data protection. Chapter 6 addresses the post-Covid European regulatory initiatives on the subject matter, and its potential effects on privacy and data protection. Chapter 7 is the outcome of a six-month internship with a company in Italy and focuses on the protection of the fundamental rights through common standardisation and certification, demonstrating that such standards can serve as supporting tools to guarantee the right to privacy and data protection in digital health technologies.
The thesis concludes with the observation that finding and transposing the European privacy and data protection standards into scenarios, such as public healthcare emergencies where digital health technologies are deployed, requires rapid co-ordination between the European Data Protection Authorities and the Member States to guarantee that individual privacy and data protection rights are ensured. It observed that with the introduction of AI-based digital health technologies, the protection of the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection will remain a topical subject, with the need to work on harmonising different applicable regulatory regimes to ensure regulatory clarity.