Today, an increasing amount of personal data is collected about us , but often locked into silos. This means that many know something about me, but no one has a whole picture on who I am and what I need. For example, my healthcare expert knows something, my wellness service provider knows something and the grocery store that I use knows what I typically buy. Google knows where I live and Apple through their health app knows how many steps I walk in a day. The worst case is, if the use of this kind of information comes as a big surprise for a person.
The upcoming European general data protection regulation will change the way companies do business in personal data markets, as it states that individuals should be given control over their personal data. They should be able to access and see how the data is being used and if they wish, to transfer the data from one service provider to another. This implies novel businesses based on personal data from health care to transportation and many other domains in between.
If we bring people from the edges of personal data based markets to the centre, they can share the data by themselves across industry borders and service providers, in order to gain value in return. Companies can on their behalf access more rich, valid and real-time data from individuals. Moreover, because most people probably don't want to manage their data themselves, new personal data platform services are needed to help people in pulling data together from different sources, storing it, making sense of it and sharing it. Examples of emerging personal data platforms in Europe are Digi.me in the UK and Healthbank in Switzerland. There are also national projects and services that could eventually take the role of a personal data platform.
Laura Kemppainen
Doctoral student of International Business
Project researcher, Martti Ahtisaari Institute
Laura.Kemppainen[at]oulu.fi