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Implementing the EHDS at the national level: News from Finland
Jaakko Lähteenmäki is a Principal Scientist at IDERHA partner VTT (Technical Research Center of Finland), and as such participated in the TEHDAS Joint Actions, developing the basis for the European Health Data Space and is also a member of the IDERHA consortium. We asked him about the Finnish view of the EHDS.
From the perspective of Finland, what is the current state of play in the implementation of the EHDS, and how advanced is the process at national level?
"Finland has a strong foundation for the EHDS in both the primary and secondary use of data. Centralised national ePrescription and patient data repository services (the Kanta services) have been in place since year 2015. These services are widely used and provide a solid basis for cross-border healthcare. The infrastructure for cross-border ePrescription has been operational since 2019, first between Finland and Estonia and later extended to more countries.
Finland also has a long tradition of collecting and sharing health-related data for secondary use. The Finnish Social and Health Data Permit Authority (Findata) and the related legislation were established in 2019, providing a national framework for the secure and transparent secondary use of health and social data."
Over the next 12 months, what concrete steps are envisaged in Finland, and which initial use cases and functionalities are expected to become operational first?
"The development in Finland proceeds along the requirements of the EHDS regulation and is not driven by specific use cases or functionalities. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has initiated the national implementation of the EHDS regulation, establishing both a steering group and two working groups to oversee the process. Efforts are also underway to update national legislation concerning the secondary use of health and social data, with the aim of enhancing flexibility in processing data permit applications, data requests, and anonymized data.
Jaakko Lähteenmäki, Principal Scientist at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland"Achieving interoperability across countries is a major hurdle for both the primary and secondary use of health data"
Finnish stakeholders are actively involved in the ongoing European joint actions (EHR-xt and TEHDAS2), which are preparing guidelines and specifications for harmonized implementation of the EHDS for both primary and secondary data use. A specific EU-financed project (FinHITS) led by Findata inolves further development of the Finnish data infrastructure to be aligned with EHDS."
What are the most significant challenges for Finland in implementing the EHDS, both in aligning with EU-level requirements and in addressing national implementation realities?
"Despite relatively well-established national infrastructures, several challenges remain in aligning with EU-level requirements. Achieving interoperability across countries is a major hurdle for both the primary and secondary use of health data, as multiple standards are still in use throughout Europe. The European Electronic Health Record exchange Format (EHRxF) is intended to guide member states towards harmonised standards for data sharing at both the technical and semantic levels. However, deploying these harmonised standards in the heterogeneous information system landscape of healthcare will require substantial effort. Differences in the maturity of national infrastructures and variability in existing practices also pose major challenges for achieving interoperability at the organisational level."
