U.K. to Open Health Records as E.U. Considers Restrictions

摘要

The ever-present tension between protect ing individuals' privacy and opening patient records for research has come to the fore with a new British proposal to make health data more available to scientists. The U.K. plan may run smack into the European Union, however, which is exploring revisions to its data-protection guidelines that could stifle certain kinds of health studies. "Researchers have been quite worried because the con sequences for research have not been in the focus" of E.U. policymaking, says Magnus Stenbeck, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and director of the Swedish Research Council's Database Infrastructure Committee.