19-20th of June 2023, Brussels/online
The objective of the workshop was to discuss elements of Secure Processing Environments (SPEs). It brought together experts from academia, industry, and policymakers to exchange on the basic technical and organizational requirements, best practices, and their relevance for the realization of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) and in connection with recent developments within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
Following presentations on OpenVRE and SecureVRE (Spain), Sensitive Cloud (Czech Republic), TSD (Norway), Molgenis (The Netherlands), Health Data Hub (France), de.NBI cloud (Germany), THL and Findata (both Finland), speakers agreed that many elements were indeed in place, according to these best practices. A regulatory roadmap, however, was needed and would allow retaining a plurality of SPE providers. SPEs were meant to pave new ways, rather than closing doors, and thus required incorporating user needs, especially a ‘cultural change’ in service provision and corresponding training of staff. To keep pushing for a common view, SPEs should start building from different agreements on common technical elements that can ensure interoperability. This includes a basic agreement on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and even more so an agreement on where those operability points are to enable global collaboration.
The workshop was jointly organized by the EU-Projects EOSC-Life and HealthyCloud and it attracted more than 150 participants.