What happens when you take the complex world of data governance out of the textbook and into the real world? During the TUM Project Week in January 2026, students did exactly that, tackling what is probably one of the most ambitious and pressing digital challenges of the next five years in Europe: the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS). The EDI, in cooperation with the TUM Chair for Philosophy and History of Science and Technology and the Austrian National Public Health Institute (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH), offered a data clinic in the format of a project week at Munich’s Eine-Welt-Haus. TUM students from diverse disciplines, such as engineering, health sciences, biology, and social sciences, participated, each bringing diverse background knowledge to the table.

The Challenge: Navigating the EHDS

With the EHDS officially entering into force in March 2025, the focus has shifted towards how health data should be used and shared across Member States, including their use for “secondary purposes” in responsible ways and without compromising public trust. In the context of the EHDS, secondary use refers to the way health data is reused for research, policy-making or public health monitoring.

In collaboration with our partner, the Austrian National Public Health Institute, students were asked to explore a critical data challenge: How can ethical and public value dimensions be integrated when assessing the secondary use of health data within the EHDS?

Workshop Learnings & Expert Insights

Under the guidance of EDI fellows Dr Kim Hajek, Dr Paul Trauttmansdorff, and assistant Lena Sindel, students were first introduced to critical questions of data governance and ethics and then moved beyond theory through a series of interactive sessions and workshop formats. The data clinic activities included:

• Exchanges with a practitioner from the Austrian National Public Health Institute: allowed students to further understand and explore the role and work of Health Data Access Bodies (HDABs)—key facilitating organisations in EU Member States that manage the process of finding and accessing health data sets for secondary use on national levels.
• Visualizing health data:  a creative workshop, led by Dr. Paul Hepp and artist Jonas Fischer (Institute of History and Ethics in Medicine, TUM), to experiment with the use of graphic art methods to visualize health data flows.
• Expert workshops on critical data studies with Prof. Sabina Leonelli (EDI Director and Chair for Philosophy and History of Science and Technology), and with Dr Magdalena Eitenberger (University of Vienna) on data solidarity and public value concepts.
• Interactive group sessions led by the EDI team, in which student teams developed their ideas and analysis.

Some Findings: There is not just One Public

One significant take-away from the week was that “the public” is not a single, monolithic category. While the EHDS often treats “data subjects” as an undifferentiated group, students explored four “public dimensions” for how an individual might approach sharing their health data for secondary use. These perspectives are shaped by personal experience and context and can even change over time:

Students also worked to create a clearer understanding of the “data journeys” surrounding an HDAB. They sought to map out where public feedback and transparency mechanisms—from informing to active decision-making—could be integrated into these journeys and organizational procedures. The concept of “public value” plays an important role here, as students learned when mapping the benefits and risks of data flows through a multi-agent network, from patients to biobanks, researchers, states, and pharmaceutical companies.

By connecting students with practitioners, the project week demonstrated how ethical data governance goes beyond legal regulation; it is equally about understanding the diverse expectations of the people whose health data may be shared and who will ultimately bring the vision of the EHDS into being.

The EDI will present the project week’s activities and outcomes at its upcoming Town Hall meeting on 12 March 2026 in Munich as well as during the Forum New Teaching Formats Day on 30 April 2026. A poster on this data clinic has been published and is openly accessible on EDI’s Zenodo page (see here).