UMC Utrecht and technology partner Roseman Labs won the Dutch Privacy Award 2026 yesterday. The team won in the technology category with the NSK data workshop. This is a privacy-by-design collaboration tool that allows different agencies to work together in a privacy-friendly manner. They work together to identify child abuse at an early stage. This award underscores UMC Utrecht’s role as a pioneer in healthcare innovation.
Eline van den Heuvel, paediatrician at the social paediatrics department of the WKZ: “As healthcare providers, we see every day how devastating child abuse is for children and their future development. Changing this requires cooperation, because no single hospital or doctor can solve this problem alone. This technology helps us do that.”
How does it work? Using advanced techniques, sensitive patient data is processed exclusively in encrypted form. This allows hospitals to learn together and improve the quality of care without compromising the privacy of children and families. Roseman Labs’ technology makes it possible to perform in-depth analyses without access to traceable data. This technology is complemented by PerSPEctive, a modular toolkit developed by Health Data Space Utrecht that acts as an interface between the end user and the encrypted data.
PerSPEctive simplifies analysis and makes the results available within a secure processing environment, in this case that of anDREa B.V. (Digital Research Environment). This allows healthcare institutions to collaborate independently and set up comparable data workspaces within a few months. This makes the solution scalable, sustainable, and widely applicable both within and outside of healthcare.
The award was presented by Privacy First and ECP| Platform for the Information Society during the National Privacy Conference. The jury praised the combination of technical innovation, social relevance, and practical applicability. The team convincingly demonstrates that it is possible to achieve significant social impact while respecting privacy – and thus better protect vulnerable children.
