The way the current draft of the law allows secondary uses of medical records is a privacy scandal waiting to happen, Anderson said during the Amsterdam Privacy Conference on Monday.

The loophole, he said, is in articles 81 and 83 of the draft data protection regulation, which covers the way personal health data may be processed in the 27 E.U. member states. The data can, for instance, be used for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes -- but the way the draft proposal is crafted poses a big privacy risk, Anderson said.

"The fundamental problem is that everyone from insurers to drug companies wants access to masses of personal data," said Anderson. And if Europeans are not careful they could reveal very personal information to both academic and commercial researchers, he said.

The data could, for instance, be used to set up patient registries for improving diagnoses, differentiating between similar types of diseases, and preparing studies for therapies. The same information could also be useful for pharmacists who might want to adjust their prescriptions, said Anderson.

There is a big tussle coming up about those secondary uses, he said.