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Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs

The study 'Big data and B2B platforms: the next big opportunity for Europe' analyses how to accelerate the growth of the data-based economy and support the development of business-to-business (B2B) platforms in Europe, focusing on two sectors: automotive and healthcare. It reflects the importance for European companies, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to take full advantage of the fourth industrial revolution to maximise innovation and ultimately ensure growth and employment. The study started in December 2018 and will be completed by December 2020.

The first workshop on data-sharing for cooperative, connected and automated mobility took place on 11 April 2019. The first health data workshop took place on 23 May 2019.

The objectives of the study are to

  1. Enable businesses, especially SMEs, to reap all of big data's benefits
  2. Design and implement two pilot projects: one on connected and automated mobility and the other on high-impact healthcare
  3. Promote and stimulate strategic investment in high-impact projects in the above-mentioned areas
  4. Support SMEs' participation in the data economy by identifying barriers and recommending possible solutions

To meet its objectives, the study will deliver two pilot projects, with a data-sharing platform for each. We will test and identify legal, technical and practical needs for the viability and functionality of the platforms as marketplaces.

Automotive sector pilot

This pilot is called 'Fair and equal data sharing for cooperative, connected and automated mobility'. It focuses on a possible solution for fair and undistorted competition, notably equal access for all market participants to in-vehicle data. To this end, it pilots the development of a shared server architecture, based on the conclusions of the European Commission study 'Access to in-vehicle data and resources' (2017). The pilot studies the challenges and opportunities offered by a shared server solution for data exchange for independent third-party service providers, and the risks associated with possible market distortions introduced by the forerunners. It also investigates the required capabilities and economic and technical competences of third-party service providers and vehicle repairers, as well as the security, liability, data protection and ownership, anonymisation and user consent issues.

High-impact healthcare pilot

This pilot is called 'Piloting a high-quality, diabetes-related data repository by using the latest technologies and big data breakthroughs'. It focuses on developing a pan-European data-sharing platform that responds to FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) and can connect data from different research sources. This pilot helps to gain insight into the hurdles and opportunities of a health data marketplace with a clear focus on type 2 diabetes health data. Specific use cases will show the added value of such federated data.

Multi-stakeholder workshops support the design and implementation of the pilots. Each pilot has four workshops, one for each phase. Their purpose is to discuss progress and validate the intermediate and final results of the study with selected experts.

Study material and information

Workshop reports

Infographics