Meet Visiting Fellow Patricia Cervera de la Cruz!
7 October 2024
Could you tell us a little more about yourself?
My name is Patricia Cervera de la Cruz. I am a third-year PhD student at Ghent University’s Faculty of Law, where I am supervised by Professor Mahsa Shabani. This October, I will be undertaking a visiting fellowship at the LCHL. I am originally from Spain but have lived in the US, the UK and Belgium, where I am currently based. I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Psychology at Durham University and my LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh. Following my Master’s, I worked as an associate researcher at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law (CBMER) in KU Leuven, where I developed a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Research Ethics for the Master of Bioethics program.
What does your research focus on?
My research focuses on the secondary use of health data within the framework of the upcoming European Health Data Space (EHDS). I am particularly interested in exploring the principle of fairness as a tool to help us ensure an ethically acceptable secondary use of health data. My work investigates how the EHDS addresses questions related to fairness, considering aspects like the interpretation of public interest, the extent of citizen control over their health data, the involvement of commercial entities and the return of benefits from secondary health data use to both individuals and society. During my time as a visiting fellow, I will be analyzing and writing up the results of interviews conducted with health data experts to understand their experiences with the secondary use of health data and their expectations regarding the implementation of the EHDS.
What inspired you to choose this particular field of study?
My interest in this topic grew out of my work at KU Leuven developing the MOOC. One of the topics in the course was Big Data in research. As I delved deeper into the subject, I became aware of the unique opportunities that health data reuse offers for research, as well as the ethical challenges it presents. Issues like meeting informed consent requirements and reconciling data protection laws with the often unpredictable goals of big data research revealed a need for new ethical and legal frameworks. These pressing questions inspired me to pursue a PhD to explore how existing and emerging legal frameworks can address these issues effectively.