Elements of Secure Processing Environments (Workshop Report) V1.0

The objective of this workshop was to discuss elements of Secure Processing Environments (SPEs). It brought together experts from academia, industry, and policy makers to exchange on the basic technical and organisational requirements, best practices, and their relevance for the realisation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) and in connection with recent developments within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).   

Following presentations on OpenVRE and SecureVRE (Spain), Sensitive Cloud (Czech Republic), TSD (Norway), Molgenis (The Netherlands), Health Data Hub (France), de.NBI cloud (Germany), THL and Findata (both Finland), speakers agreed that many elements are indeed in place, according to these best practices. A regulatory roadmap, however, is needed and shall allow to retain a plurality of SPE providers. SPEs are meant to pave new ways, rather than closing doors, and thus require incorporating user needs, especially a ‘cultural change’ in service provision and corresponding training of staff. To keep pushing for a common view, SPEs should start building from different agreements on common technical elements that can ensure interoperability. This includes a basic agreement on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), and even more so an agreement on where those operability points are to enable global collaboration.  

This workshop was jointly organised by the EU-Projects EOSC-Life and HealthyCloud on 19-20th of June 2023 in Brussels/online. It attracted more than 150 participants.