Navigating Data Governance in Digital Health: Balancing Privacy and Innovation in Global South

In recent time, the cases of data breaches in healthcare sector has increased largely in comparison to other care/service sectors because healthcare data is more in demand in the black market than any other type of data as it takes more time to discover healthcare fraud and the stolen data can be used for longer period in the cases of chronic diseases. Healthcare sector is also vulnerable in terms of immediate breach notification measures which delay the process of estimating the volume of data compromised due to ransomware attacks. The data breach challenges in health systems have revealed that there is an enormous amount of personal patient data lying with various health agencies which are vulnerable and prone to cyber-attacks. This brief urges that if these health-data were collected, stored, analysed and secured properly, they could help the populous countries like India, China and Brazil to focus on long-term measures to build a resilient health governance system to prevent, prepare and respond to future health-related challenges along with maintaining essential health services.