In its statement, the German Ethics Council shows the developments in the use of Big Data in healthcare and the opportunities and risks associated with it.
In addition to the detailed analysis of the existing legal requirements for Big Data, the Ethics Council makes recommendations on how to deal with Big Data and on the design of the framework conditions under which Big Data could be used in the health sector in the future to improve medical research and care in the treatment of serious illnesses . At the same time, insured persons must retain sovereignty over their data at all times. The opinion of the German Ethics Council is a contribution to a social discussion about the use of health-related data in Germany.
The Federal Ministry of Health is currently funding four research projects with more than 1.5 million euros that deal with the ethical questions of digitization raised by the Ethics Council.