Privacy-First Research with OpenSAFELY
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OpenSAFELY represents a revolutionary approach to medical research that prioritizes patient privacy while enabling valuable insights from healthcare data. Rather than giving researchers direct access to sensitive GP records, it allows them to submit code that runs in a secure environment, with only privacy-checked aggregated results returned. Hannes Lowette talks to Eli Holderness about how the system works, its benefits for ensuring reproducible science, the challenges of working with data not collected for research purposes, and its potential applications beyond healthcare. The approach balances the need for medical research with strict privacy protections, ensuring patients maintain trust in how their sensitive data is used.
Transcript
OpenSAFELY represents a revolutionary approach to medical research that prioritizes patient privacy while enabling valuable insights from healthcare data. Rather than giving researchers direct access to sensitive GP records, it allows them to submit code that runs in a secure environment, with only privacy-checked aggregated results returned.
Hannes Lowette talks to Eli Holderness about how the system works, its benefits for ensuring reproducible science, the challenges of working with data not collected for research purposes, and its potential applications beyond healthcare. The approach balances the need for medical research with strict privacy protections, ensuring patients maintain trust in how their sensitive data is used.
About the speakers
Developer Advocate & Professional Nerd
Head of learning & development at Axxes and a passionate .NET developer