Danielle van der Merwe

Counsel, Latham & Watkins

Danielle van der Merwe advises multinational and UK clients on a range of data privacy and cybersecurity matters, including in connection with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Drawing on over a decade of experience, Ms. van der Merwe counsels a variety of global companies, leading financial institutions, healthcare providers and technology companies on their most complex and sensitive data privacy issues. Her industry experience spans a number of cutting-edge sectors, including technology, social media, healthcare and gaming.

Ms. van der Merwe regularly advises clients throughout the corporate lifecycle, serving as an extension of their in-house legal team. She brings particular experience handling cross-border matters arising from product developments, transactions, and investments, including large-scale GDPR compliance reviews. Ms. van der Merwe also delivers sophisticated insight on privacy issues in connection with white collar investigations, both in the UK and internationally.

A business-minded problem solver, Ms. van der Merwe offers a unique perspective on clients’ needs garnered from her secondment experience at several retail, health, insurance, and sports companies.

Ms. van der Merwe is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

In addition to her commercial work, Ms. van der Merwe provides privacy-related counsel to nonprofit clients on a pro bono basis.

Contributed to

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Digital health—data protection and privacy case studies

Practice Notes

This Practice Note examines data protection considerations in relation to digital health. It first explains the general concept of digital health, which encompasses mHealth, mobile apps, telemedicine, machine learning, etc, and provides some background on the increasing use of digital health solutions in the life sciences sector. It also provides an overview of the regulatory authorities and key stakeholders in different jurisdictions: EU, UK, France and Germany. This Practice Note then analyses the data protection challenges posed by digital health through three different case studies, covering a wide range of digital health technology applications: wearables (ie devices that remotely monitor patients in real time in non-clinical environments to improve patient care and medical diagnosis), artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic tools (ie AI tool which analyses mammograms and radiology images to predict diagnosis) and digital health records (ie medical software). Key concepts of applicable data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are examined through these case studies: role of the relevant parties (controller, processor or joint controller of personal data), applicable legal basis, transparency, accuracy, anonymisation, special category data, secondary use of personal data, security, data transfers, data hosting, data subject rights, and cookies.

Life Sciences