On Friday 18 September 2026 we organized the very first GET REHDY Symposium! Diverse speakers from the GET REHDY consortium and the broader community highlighted how this project is striving for health data sharing to improve patient outcomes by fostering innovative health solutions, and how they believe the European Health Data Space (EHDS) can be a driver for this.
Our keynote speaker Stijn Janssens from Dataminded nicely introduced the idea of ‘data product thinking’: not a commercial approach to health data but rather seeing the value in your health data as both a data holder and data user, and treating your data with that value in mind. Jens Declerck from i~HD (The European Institute for Innovation through Health Data) followed up on the question on assessing the value of data, and how we can define data quality.
Manon Vanderhaeghe from KU Leuven CiTiP (Centre for IT & IP Law) highlighted very clearly the IP and trade secrets in the EHDS, and what makes the EHDS approach to these challenges so novel. Going from challenges and open questions, Freija Descamps from edenceHealth shared a business perspective on what value different stakeholders and businesses in the health domain could gain from the EHDS, as well as some open questions on how business models will evolve in the future.
Ellen De Vos from imec-SMIT (Studies in Media, Innovation & Technology Research Group) showed the results of the stakeholder interviews and the insights into the different views people can have on the EHDS and what it means in finding their drivers into the willingness to invest in the EHDS vision. These results are an invitation to start looking for the common ground in these perspectives to bring stakeholders together to work towards a common goal.
Lastly, Erik Laes from VITO brought some insights into how patients and people in general might perceive the EHDS and how trust is essential in making good on the promises the EHDS wants to deliver. Transparency is a key aspect in this. Moreover, trust goes both ways: we need to trust people to see the value in improving health outcomes by health data sharing. We also need to earn people’s trust in the solutions for secondary use of data to achieve this.
In the afternoon, a very interesting Belgian Data Spaces Day also saw some highlights of the GET REHDY project presented by Daniela Spajic from KU Leuven CiTiP, while diving deeper into the wide world of data spaces and how different sectors are working towards data sharing and creating value from this.
Thank you to all our speakers for these inspiring sessions. Also thank you to our very engaged audience for challenging us and for your insightful questions. We look forward to continuing this journey with all of you!
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