Your health data, without the jargon
Who can see your medical record? Is your cycle app covered by privacy law? Can "anonymized" data identify you? The answers, and what you can do about it.
Who owns your health data?
Health data is the most protected legal category, yet institutions hold it and patients rarely control it. What the law says and how ownership works.
Read the explainer →Is your period-tracking app covered by health privacy law?
Mostly no. HIPAA covers healthcare providers, health plans and clearinghouses, not consumer apps. What that means for your cycle-tracking data.
Read the explainer →What is the women's health data gap?
Female-specific conditions carry 14% of the women's health burden but received under 1% of research funding. Why the data exists yet research can't use it.
Read the explainer →GDPR, EHDS, nLPD: what actually protects your health data in Europe?
Three regimes govern European health data: GDPR, the new European Health Data Space and Switzerland's nLPD. What each covers, and the gaps they leave.
Read the explainer →Can "anonymized" health data still identify you?
Often yes. Records stripped of identifiers can be re-identified by combining quasi-identifiers. What de-identification really protects, and what works better.
Read the explainer →Why do health data breaches keep breaking records?
Healthcare has been the most expensive sector for data breaches for 14 straight years: $7.42M per incident, 279 days to contain. The cause is structural.
Read the explainer →Does stricter health data regulation mean less research?
Early evidence says it can: Finland's research permits fell an estimated 47% below projections. Why protection and research keep colliding, and the way out.
Read the explainer →Why is women's cycle data so fragmented, and why does it matter?
Millions of women record their cycle, yet every app speaks its own language. How an interoperability model finally opens this data to research, with consent.
Read the explainer →What does "health data as a common good" mean?
Not state ownership, and not a market: a common good is governed so it serves care and research while each person keeps control. How HDS's statutes encode it.
Read the explainer →What is data altruism under the EHDS?
The European Health Data Space creates a pathway for patients to donate data to research. What the regulation says, the timeline, and what it takes.
Read the explainer →Why does open source matter for health data?
You can't audit a black box. Why health data infrastructure should be inspectable, what a UN Digital Public Good certification covers, and what HDS builds on.
Read the explainer →What does granular consent actually look like?
Not a cookie banner: consent that names what is shared, with whom, why and for how long, revocable in one action, with every access logged and auditable.
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