Privacy preserving vaccinating‐ and testing‐pass for the European Union

Abstract

AbstractPhysicians and scientists hope that health‐data will provide new insights into improving medical care and optimizing healthcare costs. However, data protection laws in Europe often place limits on the use of patient data. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, both digital immunity records and data on infections were needed for pandemic management. Using this example, the research project will develop a system concept for vaccination, testing, and recovery proof called privacy preserving pass for vaccination and testing (P3VT), that will make collected data available to research and policy pandemic management in real time and anonymized. P3VT consistently considers the goals of privacy‐by‐design, data minimization and transparency of the EU‐GDPR. Expert interviews validated the system from medical, technical, and privacy perspectives. P3VT offers several advantages compared to the EU digital COVID certificate such as pseudonymized proofing of vaccination, testing, and recovery for a reduction of misuse of sensitive personal data and transparency about the nature, timing, and purpose of the proof. Above that anonymized medical data are provided to improve pandemic management, and research. P3VT is thus an exemplary solution for the comprehensive provision of health‐data for research purposes combined with high‐level data protection. Further areas of application are conceivable.