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The 10th Conference on Social and Economic Data, held from 22 to 23 June 2026, brought together researchers, policymakers, data holders, and research infrastructures. A key focus of the discussions was data protection and data security, as well as the German government’s planned Research Data Act. NFDI4Health was represented by Marie Gebhardt, Jennifer Allen, Charlotte Dries, Alessandra Kuntz, and Ulrich Sax. In a keynote talk, Marie Gebhardt presented key points of the discussion.
The conference made clear that data form an important foundation for evidence-based policymaking – with access control remaining in the hands of democratically elected actors. A central topic was data linkage in Germany, which remains complex and resource-intensive compared to other European countries. This led to discussion of a cross-sectoral identifier that could be used beyond the health sector. In addition, the aim should be to use as many standardised indicators and items as possible across studies and surveys in order to improve comparability and reusability.
