Implementing the Health Data Space of Catalunya
A project for: CatSalut
BRIEF
The Challenge
Catalonia is creating the Espai de Dades de Salut de Catalunya (EDSC) to establish a central analytical repository capable of registering, storing, retrieving and analysing large volumes of health data (structured and unstructured) and to support advanced analytics and AI for multiple actors of the health system. Key challenges include the heterogeneity of information systems and limited interoperability, the need for new data pipelines and bidirectional exchange models with quality controls, identity federation and granular access control, shared indicator/code catalogues aligned with European standards, and the ability to adapt to the evolving EHDS regulation while ensuring different organisations can progress despite varying digital maturity. The establishment of a Data Office (‘Oficina de la Dada’) is central to leading governance, defining adherence procedures and enabling reuse and transparency.
FOCUS
The Approach
The project follows a comprehensive, system‑wide approach to build a secure, interoperable health data ecosystem that facilitates the management and use of data. It emphasizes a hybrid, multicloud architecture, enabling seamless integration with existing systems and federated infrastructures. Its approach prioritises standardisation, interoperability, and data discoverability, using frameworks such as HealthDCAT‑AP to ensure consistency across domains. Strong governance and operating models guide coordination among stakeholders, while robust processes support secure access, responsible data management, and compliance with EU‑level requirements. Altogether, the approach establishes the foundations for a scalable, federated environment that enables high‑quality management and use of health data across Catalonia.
CONCLUSIONS
The Envisioned Result
Expected outputs include:
1) An operational EDSC platform with modular services for data ingestion and treatment, consolidation and publication, data catalogue and glossary, master/reference data, advanced analytics/AI, and global services (security, monitoring, FinOps, administration).
2) A HealthDCAT-AP-aligned dataset catalogue to support discoverability and federation.
3) User-facing processes for access requests, permissions and tracking.
4) Secure processing environments enabling ‘bring the questions to the data.
5) Improved data quality management including reusable quality.
6) A governance and operating model (hub-and-spoke) enabling CatSalut’s Data Office to coordinate domains, products and stakeholders and to federate with national and EU nodes.
PREDICTBY
Our Role
PredictBy is responsible for multiple tasks in this project as experts in EHDS / EEDS regulatory and governance expertise and Health data ecosystem monitoring, capacity building & stakeholder engagement
Our role in the project consists of conducting the following tasks:
Translate EHDS requirements into practical governance and operating procedures for the Catalan context, including the end-to-end secondary-use ‘data user journey’.
Provide expertise on European infrastructures for secondary use and support alignment with interoperability/metadata standards such as HealthDCAT-AP.
Support stakeholder mapping and engagement across the health ecosystem and contribute to training/capacity-building activities to accelerate adoption of the new model.
Design and digitise end-to-end access-management circuits and governance of the EDSC.