I recently spoke with the chief information officer of the World Health Organization[1], Bernardo Mariano, about digital transformation and healthcare on episode 364[2] of the CxOTalk series of discussions with the world's top innovators.
The subject of data ownership and related ethical considerations was one of the most interesting aspects of our conversation.
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We all know that technology companies -- Facebook, Google, Amazon, and most other online companies -- gather, aggregate, share, and monetize their users' personal data. The scale of data aggregation, together with the impact of that scale on peoples' lives, raise questions in areas such as data privacy, ownership of data, and legal protections for consumers.
The World Health Organization's agenda includes taking a leadership position on issues such as these in relation to health data. Given WHO's prominence, and their ability to convene public discussions, as Bernardo told me, we must pay attention to their perspectives.
You can watch our entire, in-depth conversation in the video above and read the complete transcript[3]. Edited comments from WHO's CIO on the topic of data are below.
How can we navigate ethical considerations around data and data ownership?
The World Health Organization is key to ensuring that we bring about international regulation on health data. The European Union has the GDPR that protects privacy. Each country has its own national privacy laws to protect their citizens' data.
More countries are bringing laws that forbid the cloud providers, for instance, to take data to the cloud. There are a number of examples of countries where health or national data, by regulation, should not leave national borders.
As these different interests and perspectives come into play, and with the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to lean on big