Workshop explores health data privacy, AI and public trust

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Oxford's Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX), with the support of GSK's Responsible AI team, hosted a multidisciplinary workshop on 13 May 2026 exploring the future of health data privacy in the context of AI advancement and UK medical research.

Photograph of a session during the health data privacy workshop

The workshop, titled 'Health Data Privacy: Hope, Hype and Harm', brought together experts to consider how factors such as recent changes to data protection law and the development of the UK Health Data Research Service are reframing debates about privacy, governance and responsible innovation. Discussions focused on three themes: synthetic data, data governance models, and the legal bases for processing personal health data.

AI was a central topic: participants examined the promise and risks of using synthetic data to train AI models, the safeguards needed to prevent bias or re-identification, and the importance of transparent, trustworthy governance for health data reuse. The workshop also considered how legal and regulatory frameworks should support AI-enabled research while maintaining public trust and effective oversight.

A full account of the health data privacy workshop, including discussion of the policy recommendations emerging from the day, is available on the HeLEX blog.

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