Health Data Use Act: Timely, neutral data basis offers potential for the further development of the healthcare system
14.08.2023 13:27
“The Health Data Use Act offers the opportunity to promote the supply of innovative medicines and digital health applications. To achieve this, however, the new health research data center should definitely abolish existing data monopolies in the health industry,” comments BAH Managing Director Dr. Hubertus Cranz presented the draft bill of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) on the planned Health Data Use Act (GDNG) presented on August 4, 2023.
The association hearing on this will take place today, Monday, August 14th. With the law, the BMG wants to improve the use of health data for research and development as well as for health care, especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
In addition to rapid and coordinated processing of applications, neutrality when accessing health data is particularly important for the BAH: “The uniform and common data basis plays a crucial role in achieving negotiation results in order to do justice to the various interests in the area of pharmaceuticals and digital health applications . The recently founded Health Research Data Center could make a decisive contribution to improving patient care in the near future,” said Cranz.
Access to cancer registry data
In addition, the BAH sees a need for improvement with regard to access to linked data from the Health Research Data Center and the clinical cancer registries. It should be clearly defined here that pharmaceutical companies also have access to this data, especially as part of the early benefit assessment. Currently, care data is not sufficiently taken into account in the early benefit assessment of AMNOG.
Involvement of service providers
As part of the present draft, it is also intended that health and nursing care insurance companies should be given the authority to carry out data-based evaluations on the personal health care of their insured persons, to improve health care and to increase patient safety. This gives health and nursing care insurance companies a new opportunity to address their policyholders on an individual basis about health care. “The topic is of a sensitive nature as patients usually talk to their doctor or pharmacist about their individual health care. It is therefore essential to include these service providers in advance in the communication between health and nursing care insurance companies and patients. This is the only way to increase patients’ trust in the use of their health data,” emphasizes BAH Managing Director Cranz.