GDPR And Clinical Research: Time For A Rethink?

Although it's become an increasingly common occurrence, I can't help but feeling excited whenever the Financial Times reports on data protection. This shouldn't be a surprise, given the extent to which much of global business now runs on data, but it's still heartening to see the issues that many of us grapple with on a daily basis brought to and synthesised for a wider audience.

It happened again yesterday, when an email notification came through that Robert Eiss, a preeminent figure in U.S. medical research at the National Institutes of Health, had written an opinion piece for the Financial Times calling for a rethink of how the GDPR applies to scientific data sharing.

In particular, Eiss describes the challenges of lawfully exporting personal data - data that are often pseudonymised, or key-coded - to U.S. government agencies that fund research around the world and publicly-supported research universities, and suggests that building on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy