Health data is a term used to describe all the information generated through the process of delivering healthcare to populations, including disease registries, public health surveys, clinical trial data, insurance claims and electronic health records.

Primary use of health data is when health data is used to deliver healthcare and to make decisions about the care of the individual from whom it was collected.

Secondary use of health data is the use of aggregated health data from population-level sources – such as electronic health records, health insurance claims data and health registry data – to improve personal care planning, medicines development, safety monitoring, research, and policymaking.