EDPB's New Guidelines Relieve Concerns Over Processing Health Data For Scientific Research

The novel coronavirus pandemic has created an immediate and immense need for scientific research. Amid this urgency, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), during its twenty-third plenary session held on April 21, adopted guidelines to shed light on legal questions concerning the use of health data (pursuant to article 4(15) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) for such research purposes.

The guidelines reiterate that data protection rules do not hinder measures taken to combat the coronavirus outbreak and in fact provide special rules for the processing of health data for the purpose of scientific research (for instance, in article 9(2)(j) and article 89(2)) that will be applicable in the current crisis.