A Guide to Data Sharing in Medical Research

Necessary

Medical research is tantamount to people living longer and better lives, but that said, sharing what is learned in each medical silo, across all silos, is riddled with levels of impossibility. Patients have rights and they are aggressively defended by laws and those looking to litigiously pursue violations of those protections. There is no debate that patients need their personal health information protected, but at the same time, there are precious learning opportunities that are, somewhat regrettably, buried in legality and bound to each silo.

Epiphany

Sharing is the new frontier for all of us, from cars to homes, we are sharing just about everything. Along comes a pragmatist, understanding the need to protect information, yet also knowing how valuable that information is under the aegis of data sharing. The question becomes if you take a name and all associated medically identifying information off of an image or record, is it still proprietary? The question looms large, but at the same time, other countries, which have some of the same technologies that we do in the United States, can conceivably upload images of no-known-origin to a website so that other medical professionals can research, find and share those images so as to learn more about the human body. This is crucially important for moving the human race forward.

Gifts

A platform that can store several images, records, tables and other pertinent medical research articles and information in a way that can be immediately researched with keywords, and that which warrants results from around the globe, might be the greatest tool in the bags of data sharing for medical professionals the world over. In addition, to be able to compare many images of the same area of the body, like MRI images of the human brain, can warrant such positive developments going forward, this would seem like a legally-protected gift of a website.

Seeing

Doctors and medical personnel alike have been largely flying blind for decades now, having just the hospital’s records and images of certain conditions to go on. Where an independent medical sharing platform will really do good work is in the area of medical trials, where a group of patients in Asia, with seemingly identical preliminary brain MRI’s, are given the same exact trial as patients in another part of the world. This is revolutionary leveraging of medical technology that can be a teaching tool as well as a learning platform full of medical research articles, which carries the added benefit of helping medical professionals gain a greater point-of-reference on several maladies.

Discovering

The greatest thing about technology is realizing new uses for a technology that was developed with just a certain function in mind. In the case of a “rights platform” where all kinds of information can be shared in an innocuous and non-identifiable way, clearly this has incalculable and positive repercussions. Students can use it to share information, doctors to share esoteric cases, consumers to research and it also creates a worldwide team of professionals who are all in it for a cause. The only way lots of diseases are going to be forced to drop their “disease” moniker is through a constant and steady pipeline of learning.

Sharing

The industrial revolution led to greater productivity, commerce and expansion. It was great and we rode the fruits of that wave, across all continents, for many years. We are in the midst of a technological revolution the likes of which we are unsure what history books will refer to this time as, but most of us know inherently that we are in the wake of something amazing. Without anticipation, we are on a ride that does not seem to ever be anything less than totally exciting, and that which also never seems to end.

Eureka

This time will likely be regarded as the greatest period in the history of human innovation and through this technological revolution, and the sharing of very valuable medical information, across all continents and professions, the curing of many diseases will no longer be a conundrum, but will rather become perfectly feasible under the aegis of the very beneficial sharing platform.

Exploring the RightsPlatform, with their ever-growing collection of what now stands at over 2 million images, will help anyone looking to leverage images for publications, comparisons, journals, or other projects where you need access to images that heretofore might have been inaccessible.