“The Importance of Sharing Health Data Globally: Advancements in Research and Treatment”

A report expected that the exchange of huge health data between different countries and the advancement of computing would contribute to increasing the efficiency of health care and research on rare diseases and epidemics.

Stressing the need to remove barriers to sharing health data between countries, and to enter into cooperative agreements to comply with technical standards for operational compatibility and ethical issues, such as privacy and access to data and its purpose, revealing the volume of data that is produced in the health care sector, which amounts to about 30% of the world’s total data.

Massive global data sets will accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. This data will identify the most effective and efficient drugs, treatments or methods according to the numbers. Provide personalized treatment according to the case of common and rare diseases more effectively.

The report stated that supporting large data sets will accelerate the process of drug development, provide better health outcomes, and improve real-time monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks.

Large sample sizes will also allow governments to adjust health policies and improve overall health status, especially for groups that were under-represented when examining the cases of the various subgroups.

The report indicated that the health data that can be collected is not limited to mortality and disease statistics, as it can exchange new information on epidemics, management and organization, compare them between countries, and classify them for use in research and analysis.

Old idea

The report issued by the World Government Summit 2023 indicated that the interest in sharing health data is not a new idea, as the history of data sharing globally began in 1965 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer was established, which is part of the World Health Organization, which today contains data from more than 180 countries. Today, interest in sharing this data is growing.

Pointing out that the area of ​​biomedical data that can be collected from each person is estimated at about a terabyte, which is equivalent to the space of 300,000 images or 130,000 books. The number of periodical publications related to sharing data on the Babmed website increased from 46 articles in 1980 to 9,605 articles in 2019. The report predicts that the global budget of the sector will grow to $15 trillion by 2030.

This growth will be offset by increased availability and data collection methods, including genomic data, medical implant data, wearable devices, sensors, retail stores, social media applications, artificial intelligence, analytics, clinical data and electronic health records. This field is also expected to grow at an annual rate of 36% by 2025, faster than the 6% growth in manufacturing.