Risk assessment and mitigation in health data research. Findings from deliberative workshops and an online survey

The Semi-Automated Risk Assessment of Data Provenance and Clinical Free-Text in Trusted Research Environments (SARA) is a collaborative project originating from the Scottish Safe Haven Network. It aims to address the challenges faced by Trusted Research Environment (TRE) staff in providing health and social care data to researchers. 

The SARA project is exploring ways of enhancing existing support systems through the introduction of secure semi-automated processes. These semi-automated processes could, if successful, improve the efficiency, reliability and robustness of checks on core aspects of the risk assessment process. 

While in the early stages of development, the SARA project team wanted to explore the views of the public on the use of semi-automation to support the assessment and mitigation of specific risks in health and social care data research, focusing on:

 • The challenges of indirect privacy risks within free-text patient data used for health research; and,

 • Data provenance (i.e. information about data items, activities and people involved in data processing) as a means of providing quality assurance. 

The overall aim of the research was to provide public views on risk assessment within health and social care data research to inform the design of risk-mitigation tools – and other outputs – to ultimately support, and make more robust, the decision-making within TREs