“What are the costs of little or no governance, scrutiny and understanding of multiple health data initiatives when governments, academics, public sector organisations and businesses can avoid the normal controls and transparency?” THE COVID PANDEMIC has placed a spotlight on the need for better, faster ways to share data for many purposes such as monitoring the rate and spread of the disease, identifying early warning signals for break-outs, evaluating its impact on different groups within the population, and conducting ‘track and trace’ exercises. Many initiatives have mushroomed over the last few months, some of them extremely ambitious – and they have done so extremely quickly. In one sense, that’s good – in an emergency, we have to act fast. But it also means that compromises are made and corners cut in ways that store up trouble for the future. Could this be happening with many of the current initiatives relating to health and care data? What are the costs of little or no governance, scrutiny and understanding of multiple health data initiatives when governments, academics, public sector organisations and businesses can avoid the normal controls and transparency? Continua su https://sourcenews.scot/covid-19-and-questions-of-data/ Giacomo