Health Data Hub
French national platform aggregating health data from millions of citizens for research; currently hosted on Microsoft Azure, migrating to Scaleway under a €180m contract.
Last refreshed: 17 May 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Does moving French health records off Azure actually protect them, or does EU law still leave gaps?
Timeline for Health Data Hub
Awarded to Scaleway in multi-year migration contract
European Tech Sovereignty: France awards Health Data Hub to Scaleway- Why did France move its health data from Microsoft to Scaleway?
- France awarded the Health Data Hub hosting contract to Scaleway in April 2026 to comply with Cloud au Centre doctrine and SecNumCloud requirements, eliminating US CLOUD Act exposure that made Azure hosting legally contested under GDPR.Source: Scaleway press release, April 2026
- What is the French Health Data Hub and what data does it hold?
- The Health Data Hub is France's national platform for health research data, holding a copy of the SNDS — the primary database of health records for tens of millions of French citizens — used for epidemiology, clinical research and innovation.
- When will the French health data migration to Scaleway be complete?
- The migration from Microsoft Azure to Scaleway is targeted for completion between late 2026 and early 2027, following contract award on 23 April 2026.Source: Euronews / Scaleway, April 2026
Background
The Health Data Hub (Plateforme des données de santé) is France's national platform for aggregating and governing health data from tens of millions of citizens, used for medical research, epidemiological monitoring, and innovation. On 23 April 2026, France awarded its hosting contract to Scaleway, the cloud provider owned by Iliad, replacing Microsoft Azure in a migration valued at several tens of millions of euros with full live operation targeted for late 2026 to early 2027. The move explicitly operationalises France's Cloud au Centre doctrine and the legal requirement for sensitive public data to be hosted by SecNumCloud-qualified European providers.
The selection process assessed more than 350 technical criteria, including safety, resilience, performance, and geo-redundancy across at least two French regions so that any outage cannot force a failover to non-EU infrastructure. The Hub holds a copy of the Système National des Données de Santé (SNDS), the primary database of French health records. Its governance sits under France's Ministry of Health and CNAM.
The Health Data Hub is a landmark test case for European digital sovereignty in health infrastructure. The original decision to host on Azure in 2019 drew prolonged legal challenge under GDPR given US CLOUD Act exposure; the Scaleway switch closes that vulnerability and sets a template for other EU member states' health data governance. The Hub also intersects with EU-level data space initiatives under the European Health Data Space regulation.
