Digitalisation has brought entirely new opportunities to collect, share and analyse health data in order to gain new knowledge, develop new methods and promote good health. There is a growing interest from care providers, researchers, companies and individuals in collecting more data on the health of individuals, and being able to use collected data in more and new ways. At the same time, the use of health data can bring up a range of ethical issues related to privacy, autonomy and justice among other things.
In the publication In brief – Health Data the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics describes ethical and societal aspects on health data as well as some of the ethical challenges that an increased use of health data can entail.