DataSHIELD – New Directions and Dimensions

Authors

  • Rebecca C. Wilson Data To Knowledge research group, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2294-593X
  • Oliver W. Butters School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol
  • Demetris Avraam Data To Knowledge research group, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University
  • James Baker School of History, Art History and Philosophy, University of Sussex, Brighton
  • Jonathan A. Tedds Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester
  • Andrew Turner School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7121-3121
  • Madeleine Murtagh School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University
  • Paul R. Burton Data To Knowledge research group, Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-021

Keywords:

data privacy, sensitive data, distributed data

Abstract

In disciplines such as biomedicine and social sciences, sharing and combining sensitive individual-level data is often prohibited by ethical-legal or governance constraints and other barriers such as the control of intellectual property or the huge sample sizes. DataSHIELD (Data Aggregation Through Anonymous Summary-statistics from Harmonised Individual-levEL Databases) is a distributed approach that allows the analysis of sensitive individual-level data from one study, and the co-analysis of such data from several studies simultaneously without physically pooling them or disclosing any data.

Following initial proof of principle, a stable DataSHIELD platform has now been implemented in a number of epidemiological consortia. This paper reports three new applications of DataSHIELD including application to post-publication sensitive data analysis, text data analysis and privacy protected data visualisation. Expansion of DataSHIELD analytic functionality and application to additional data types demonstrate the broad applications of the software beyond biomedical sciences. 

Downloads

Published

2017-04-19

Issue

Vol. 16 (2017)

Section

Research Papers

Categories

License

Copyright (c) 2017 The Author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms.  If a submission is rejected or withdrawn prior to publication, all rights return to the author(s):

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Submitting to the journal implicitly confirms that all named authors and rights holders have agreed to the above terms of publication. It is the submitting author's responsibility to ensure all authors and relevant institutional bodies have given their agreement at the point of submission.

Note: some institutions require authors to seek written approval in relation to the terms of publication. Should this be required, authors can request a separate licence agreement document from the editorial team (e.g. authors who are Crown employees).