May 31, 2016.
Le Figaro reveals that the Council of State has requested an annulment of a decree of the Ministry of Health, which prohibited French access to health data to for-profit research organizations.
One of the largest medico-administrative bases in the world
What reveals Le Figaro is quite astounding. On May 20, 2016, the Council of State is said to have asked the Ministry of Health to put an end to the provisions of a decree which prohibited research organizations, or other educational structures linked to research, pursuing a profit-making goal, of be able to access data from the national health insurance inter-plan information system (Sniiram).
This database is one of the largest medico-administrative databases in the world. It contains all treatment sheets, medical acts as well as all French hospital stays. Until then accessible to researchers, in order to obtain anonymous information on groups of individuals with common characteristics (the number of 30-year-old women with breast cancer, for example), it did not provide any personal data. .
Access regulated by law?
” Access to personal data was partially open to public research organizations, a decree of the Ministry of Health based on a 2013 law prohibited access to for-profit organizations », Specifies the daily. By requesting the cancellation of this decree, the Council of State will therefore allow insurance companies but also laboratories to obtain information to which they had not previously had access.
However, the Ministry of Health wished to frame any possible excesses by having an article adopted, within the framework of the health law, which indeed authorizes the unconditional and free opening to all of the data held by the Health Insurance, but only when this does not involve any risk for the privacy of the French. If we do not yet know how all this will be put in place, it will be interesting to follow the way in which the government wishes to respond to the decision of the Council of State.
