Sharing and Reuse of Sensitive Data and Samples: Supporting Researchers in Identifying Ethical and Legal Requirements

Availability of and access to data and biosamples are essential in medical and translational research, where their reuse and repurposing by the wider research community can maximize their value and accelerate discovery. However, sharing human-related data or samples is complicated by ethical, legal, and social sensitivities. The specific ethical and legal requirements linked to sensitive data are often unfamiliar to life science researchers who, faced with vast amounts of complex, fragmented, and sometimes even contradictory information, may not feel competent to navigate through it. In this case, the impulse may be not to share the data in order to safeguard against unintentional misuse. Consequently, helping data providers to identify relevant ethical and legal requirements and how they might address them is an essential and frequently neglected step in removing possible hurdles to data and sample sharing in the life sciences. Here, we describe the complex regulatory context and discuss relevant online tools—one which the authors co-developed—targeted at assisting providers of sensitive data or biosamples with ethical and legal questions. The main results are (1) that the different approaches of the tools assume different user needs and prior knowledge of ethical and legal requirements, affecting how a service is designed and its usefulness, (2) that there is much potential for collaboration between tool providers, and (3) that enriched annotations of services (e.g., update status, completeness of information, and disclaimers) would increase their value and facilitate quick assessment by users. Further, there is still work to do with respect to providing researchers using sensitive data or samples with truly ‘useful’ tools that do not require pre-existing, in-depth knowledge of legal and ethical requirements or time to delve into the details. Ultimately, separate resources, maintained by experts familiar with the respective fields of research, may be needed while—in the longer term—harmonization and increase in ease of use will be very desirable.