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Health Data Hub
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Health Data Hub

France's national platform aggregating health records from millions of citizens for research.

Last refreshed: 24 September 2026 · Appears in 2 active topics

Key Question

Does moving French health records off Azure actually protect them, or does EU law still leave gaps?

Timeline for Health Data Hub

#5 23 Apr

Awarded to Scaleway in multi-year migration contract

European Tech Sovereignty: France awards Health Data Hub to Scaleway
View full timeline →

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.

Common Questions

Reference

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.
What is the Health Data Hub?
The Health Data Hub (Plateforme des données de santé) is France's national platform aggregating health records from millions of citizens for research.
How much is France's Health Data Hub migration to Scaleway worth?
France's Health Data Hub hosting contract with Scaleway, awarded 23 April 2026, is reported at around €180m across a multi-year migration.Source: event
Why did France move the Health Data Hub off Microsoft Azure?
France cited exposure to the US CLOUD Act, which lets American authorities compel disclosure of data held by any US-headquartered provider regardless of where it is stored, as the driver for moving the Health Data Hub to Scaleway.Source: event
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