Today there is a pressing need to strengthen the security of health data flows. The consequences of a cyberattack where health data is compromised may be terrible and will negatively affect an individual’s social life, their job opportunities, etc. What we can try to do is to find a way to anonymise health data so the person it belongs to cannot be identified.
“If we anonymise data, and there are technologies that allow us to at least partially do that, it will provide defence in terms of data privacy,” said Bernardo Sequeiros, a Youth IGF Partner from Portugal.
The role of the public sector in ensuring the anonymisation of data is to be taken into account.
Governments should push for stronger anonymisation and impose stringent security frameworks for health data flows, according to Professor Gilberto Martins de Almeida from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.