gms | German Medical Science

DataSHIELD (http://www.datashield.ac.uk/, https://github.com/datashield) is an innovative software tool enabling secure remote analysis (or joint, parallelized analysis) of individual-person-data (microdata) from one or several data-sources simultaneously. Security is underpinned by preventing access to, or visualisation of, the individual-level data themselves and by proactively blocking potentially disclosive analytic output. By avoiding the physical sharing of microdata, DataSHIELD can mitigate governance and intellectual property (IP) concerns that otherwise constrain data-sharing. It also circumvents the risk that when a data-set is physically shared with a third-party, its original custodian(s) will lose control over its ultimate fate and it could end up being copied to a jurisdiction with weak governance.

In the seminar, I will explain how DataSHIELD works, outline the practicalities of its implementation which is based entirely on open-source freeware – R and OPAL – and outline the current status of the project. This update will touch on recent developments such as: the release of DataSHIELD v5; its extension to high volume omics data; and some of our newest functions. In addition, I will outline ongoing work applying DataSHIELD in health service and hospital settings – much of which has been led by collaborators in Germany.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.