The Health Data Safe (HDS) Foundation has announced a significant step forward: to underpin its health data platform using Open-Pryv software, and to appoint Pierre-Mikael Legris, the founder of Pryv, as Chief Technology Officer for Health Data Safe.
This decision signals not only a pragmatic choice of technology, but a clear statement of values about openness, sovereignty, trust, and the alignment of mission and infrastructure.
Mission alignment: privacy, sovereignty, and trust by design
Health Data Safe's declared mission is to enable individuals to "securely collect, manage, control, and share their health data — always on their own terms." This positioning demands a platform that is, from the ground up, privacy-friendly, transparent, and respectful of data sovereignty.
Recognized as a Digital Public Good by DPG Alliance, a UN-endorsed initiative, Open-Pryv is precisely a middleware built for that purpose: it handles not only data storage and access, but also consent, auditability, fine-grained permissions, and lifecycle rules. Because it was conceived to manage personal data — especially health data — in a privacy-centric way, it sits naturally under HDS's umbrella.
Open Source as the foundational bet
One of the key motivations for HDS adopting Open-Pryv is that the software is now fully open source, under the governance of the Pryv Association. For HDS, this opens up critical opportunities:
- Transparency and auditability — The code is inspectable, auditable, and open for scrutiny by external experts, increasing trust among users, partners, regulators, and the community.
- Long-term independence — HDS is not locked into a proprietary vendor. If future constraints or strategic needs shift, HDS can evolve, fork, or adapt the software as needed.
- Community leverage — As the open software evolves, HDS benefits from contributions, innovations, bug fixes, and collective momentum, making it a node in a broader collaborative fabric.
- Moral consistency — A mission in health data that claims to empower individuals is better served by software that itself is not locked behind proprietary walls.
By backing Pryv's open source development, HDS is not just picking an off-the-shelf tool — it is investing in the very infrastructure of trust and shared progress.
Speed, reliability, and regulatory confidence
Building a robust, secure personal data management stack from scratch is arduous. By choosing Pryv.io, HDS gains access to a mature, battle-tested middleware that handles many of the difficult foundational problems: security, audit trails, consent flows, interoperability, compliance with GDPR and similar regimes, APIs for data ingestion, deletion, portability, and more.
This allows HDS engineers to focus on mission-specific logic — health data models, community participation features, research access governance, UI/UX — rather than reinventing core privacy plumbing. Given the regulatory landscape in Switzerland, EU, and beyond, having a middleware backed by a community of privacy experts and already proven in health settings provides legal, security, and risk mitigation assurances.
Leadership synergy: bringing in the founder as CTO
By appointing Pierre-Mikael Legris as CTO, HDS ensures that technological vision, open source stewardship, and mission goals remain aligned. Legris's deep domain expertise, his history with Pryv, and his passion for patient empowerment make him a natural bridge between community, technology, and the foundation's strategy.
It also sends a signal to stakeholders — developers, researchers, funders, regulatory bodies — that HDS takes this seriously: it is not simply contracting a vendor but integrating a visionary technologist into its core leadership.
What this means for Open-Pryv
HDS is fully committed to the open-source development of Pryv.io. Together, the organizations are laying the foundation for interoperable, consent-driven platforms that serve patients, researchers, and society at large. Open-Pryv continues to grow as a community-driven project with its open-source future strengthened through this collaboration.
HDS will start with a focus on women's health — a field where better data ownership, privacy, and inclusivity are long overdue — with plans to expand to other areas of health and wellness, working with researchers, hospitals, and patient groups.
About Health Data Safe
The Health Data Safe Foundation empowers individuals to securely collect, manage, control, and share their health data on their own terms. Built in Switzerland, open, ethical, and legally compliant, the platform is designed to scale across Europe and beyond.
More about Health Data Safe: www.healthdatasafe.org
Full announcement: healthdatasafe.org/news/pryv-hds