On November 20th, we attended an event at The Alan Turing Institute: Private Data for Public Good: How Data Sharing Benefits Business and Society which was organised through the Novel Data Linkages for Health and Wellbeing Interest Group. The event gathered around 50 participants (25 in person) from academia, industry, and policy backgrounds to explore the barriers of businesses sharing their data for research.
The day started with valuable real-world examples of data sharing. Dr. Leon Brudy from Garmin Health highlighted how wearable data can support health predictions and behaviour change, while Dr. Lei Li from King’s College London shared lessons on trust and transparency in using wearables for gestational diabetes research. Dr. Fran Pontin from the University of Leeds discussed lessons learned from a trio of academic and business partnerships. Finally, Magdalena Getler from the Smart Data Foundry demonstrated how financial data can inform real-time economic policies.
After a break, we heard from two industry leaders: Scott Sweden from Adzuna explored how job market data can reveal economic trends to support governmental change, while Nick Evans from imin showcased a business model for accessing open fitness data.
The event ended with a dynamic group discussion addressing challenges like legal gateways, public skepticism, and the need for clear frameworks. Attendees called for streamlined processes and transparent, impactful examples to build trust and drive partnerships.
We will be collating the day’s discussion into a peer-reviewed output, so watch this space!