Authors: Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, GIZ, PharmAccess, the Digital Transformations for Health Lab
Health systems are under growing pressure: ageing populations, chronic disease, workforce shortages, and fragmented care are driving costs up while productivity remains low. At the same time, health data are multiplying across providers, insurers, labs, platforms, and devices, yet most of this information remains siloed and underused.
This creates a digital health paradox: abundant data and advanced AI exist, but governance remains too fragmented to translate them into better care, prevention, or efficiency for all.
Following the WHS VIP Dialogue “Towards Connected Digital Markets for Global Health – Emerging Approaches in Africa and Europe” on October 13, 2025, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the GIZ set out together with their partners PharmAccess and the Digital Transformations for Health Lab to advance a shared agenda: strengthening interoperability and supporting the development of Health Data Spaces overcoming governance challenges, not purely technical ones.
Europe is currently implementing the European Health Data Space, while African Union Member States are advancing digital health blueprints and national digital health strategies. These processes will shape infrastructure and standards for years to come. Alignment must happen right now. Without shared interoperability standards and compatible governance principles, Africa and Europe risk developing incompatible digital spaces.
Our initiative proposes Health Data Spaces (HDS) as an alternative approach to centralized solutions: Governance-enabled infrastructures that allow health data to be shared lawfully, securely, and across institutional and national boundaries. Their core function is to combine interoperability, consent, access control, and trusted governance so that data can support continuity of care, research and innovation, and boost integrated digital health markets.
The strategic value is especially important for Africa and Europe. Federated Health Data Spaces can scale data while preserving digital sovereignty. In an AI-driven health economy, the key issue is not ownership of infrastructure, but sovereign use of data infrastructure. Countries that lack strong domestic governance risk becoming dependent users of external platforms and AI-developers, with limited influence over standards, innovation, or value creation. Health Data Spaces offer a way to participate in global AI ecosystems on negotiable terms, ensuring that data generated locally serves public health, research, and economic development.
Join the Initiative
Health Data Spaces are not just a technical upgrade. If done well, Health Data Spaces can turn fragmented data into a governed public asset that improves care, accelerates innovation, and preserves sovereignty in a rapidly evolving digital health landscape.
The next step is to move from dialogue to coalition. We invite governments, regional bodies, funders, technical partners, private-sector actors, researchers and civil society organizations to connect with us to explore collaboration, engage with this agenda, endorse the emerging policy brief and help to shape the next phase of implementation.