Medizinregistergesetz: „Ein lebenslanges, unverhältnismäßiges Risiko“
TL;DR
The German government’s draft Medical Register Act aims to make data from roughly 350 health registers easier to use for research. A new Center for Medical Registers would review data quality and privacy; qualified registers could link data for defined purposes. At a Bundestag health committee hearing, experts attacked the draft’s privacy design: broad one-time information duties, weak patient objection rights, storage periods of up to 100 years and a higher risk that pseudonymized health records could be reidentified.
Nauti's Take
This bill sells medical registries as research fuel while leaning on privacy architecture that looks far too optimistic. Health AI teams should ask for trust offices, data minimization and real opt-outs before cheering better access.
Without that, every model gain becomes an attack surface.
Briefingshow
The draft hits a core tension in digital health policy: research needs reliable registry data, but health data cannot really be taken back once it is linked, leaked or reidentified. The fight is not simply pro- or anti-research; it is about control, transparency and whether patients keep meaningful choices over highly sensitive lifelong records.
Sources