Medical data are considered particularly sensitive personal information. Laws and regulations in most countries, including the USA and throughout Europe, generally aim to restrict sharing such information with the target of building privacy walls around each person’s data. But making such health data available more broadly is key to improved medical care, research and the advance of health science. Finland is the first country known to have adopted an approach to allow third parties to access health data for the purposes of scientific research, drug and health technology development and knowledge-based management in social and health care.
