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With a quickly altering political panorama in the USA, Canada should transfer shortly to safeguard useful Canadian well being knowledge, argue the authors of a commentary revealed within the Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal.
“The value of Canada’s health data is immense,” write Dr. Kumanan Wilson, CEO, Bruyère Well being Analysis Institute and an inner drugs specialist at The Ottawa Hospital and the College of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, and co-authors. “The sovereignty risks associated with these data are real. If Canada is to lead in the health AI space, it must move quickly to establish long-overdue privacy and technology safeguards.”
The rise of synthetic intelligence (AI) and its reliance on large quantities of knowledge has elevated the worth of those knowledge and created new dangers on prime of pre-existing issues about well being knowledge being utilized by different nations for nationwide safety functions.
“Serious privacy, security, and economic risks arise when companies in other countries hold and use Canadian data. Given the rapidly changing political climate in the United States, preserving the sovereignty of Canada’s health data—notably, ensuring that the data are subject to Canadian laws and legal systems—requires renewed focus,” writes co-author Dr. Michael Geist, a Canada Analysis Chair in Web and e-Commerce Legislation, and professor on the Middle for Legislation, Expertise and Society, College of Ottawa.
Canada’s well being system is basically reliant on US suppliers that handle digital medical document methods for hospitals and retailer encrypted knowledge on servers or cloud servers. Though these servers are situated in Canada, they’re owned by the US firms Microsoft Azure, Amazon Net Providers, and Google Cloud.
Europe has expressed related issues for his or her area. For instance, the current Clarifying Lawful Abroad Use of Knowledge (CLOUD) Act within the US that doubtlessly permits US legislation enforcement to entry knowledge held by US firms in different nations may very well be a menace.
To guard well being knowledge in Canada, the authors counsel a multipronged strategy:
Guarantee knowledge safety by requiring encryption by default
Embrace necessities in federal and provincial privateness legal guidelines to maintain knowledge within the originating location
Implement guidelines in Canadian privateness legal guidelines in opposition to disclosure of knowledge to international jurisdictions
Spend money on creating Canadian cloud servers to make sure knowledge resides in Canada with Canadian suppliers
“Canada should consider mechanisms by which our data could be used safely, securely, and in a privacy-compliant manner by Canadian private-sector entities to support the development of domestic health AI algorithms,” the authors write.
“Implementing such measures will ensure that health care decisions are based on data representative of Canada’s population, and will support the growth of domestic companies, supporting a better health system and growing tax base.”
Extra info:
Michael Geist et al, Guaranteeing the sovereignty and safety of Canadian well being knowledge, Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal (2025). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.250488
Supplied by
Canadian Medical Affiliation Journal
Quotation:
Canadian well being knowledge safety is essential in altering political local weather (2025, July 28)
retrieved 28 July 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-07-canadian-health-critical-political-climate.html
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