Available in Russian
Authors: Antonina Levashenko, Olga Soldatkina
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2026-2-78-102
Keywords: personal data; health data; right to privacy; healthcare; health insurance; access to data
Access to health data is a necessary condition for the functioning of the healthcare system and the development of medicine. Health data are primarily personal data, the legal regime for the protection of which imposes its own limits on the free transfer of such data. States have different approaches to the legal regulation of personal data and health data in particular, which, accordingly, form different solutions to the task of enhancing access to health data both for medical practitioners and for other agents in the related fields. This research paper reviews three main approaches to the regulation of personal data, represented by three jurisdictions: the European human-centric approach, the business-centric approach of the United States and the state-centric approach of China. The research paper aims to identify the distinctive features of the implementation of these three approaches to regulating the availability of health data for secondary use by third parties. Therefore, the study analyzes the legal meaning of health data formed by social practice in the legal tradition of the state and the institutional conditions of the healthcare and health insurance systems. The human-centric approach of the European Union is built around the goal of protecting human rights to privacy, so new mechanisms for enhancing access to data are developed without exemptions from the personal data protection regime. The business-centric approach of the United States is the result of the health insurance system as firstly an environment of competition between private companies, and only secondarily a system of organizing access to medical services. The competitive component hinders the development of mechanisms for access to health data that presupposes an environment of trust and common interests. The state-centric approach of China considers personal data as a resource for achieving current goals set by the government. Therefore, mechanisms for access to health data are developed and set in operation with state engagement and/or under state control. Each of the approaches under review brings its own costs for organizing access to health data. The analysis leads to the conclusions about the obstacles to enhanced access to health data which can be avoided when developing mechanisms of this kind in Russia.
About the authors: Antonina Levashenko – Senior Research Fellow and Acting Head of the Laboratory for the Analysis of Best International Practices, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy; Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Economics and Finance, Russian Academy of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, Moscow, Russia; Olga Soldatkina – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Research Fellow at the Laboratory for the Analysis of Best International Practices, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy; Research Fellow at the Institute of International Economics and Finance, Russian Academy of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, Moscow, Russia.
Citation: Soldatkina O., Levashenko A. (2026) Tri podkhoda k regulirovaniyu dostupnosti dannykh o zdorov'e dlya vtorichnogo pol'zovaniya: opyt ES, SShA i Kitaya [Three approaches to regulating access to health data for secondary use: the experience of the European Union, the United States, and China]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 78–102. (In Russian).
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