Proposed EU Data Protection Regulations Could Impede Medical Research

The EU faces high stakes for improving medical research. But portions of the EU’s proposed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) would introduce inefficiencies into the process of conducting medical research in all of the EU’s member states and could have widespread consequences.The GDPR stipulates that organizations processing individuals’ personal data must obtain informed consent from those individuals every time they want to use data for a purpose other than that for which it was originally collected. The EU should revise the proposed regulations to provide a means for researchers to obtain consent that covers multiple uses of patient data, including uses after death.