The challenge of local consent requirements for global critical care databases

Health care systems around the world are increasingly using the large amount of routinely collected health data to understand health and disease processes better and to drive continuous improvement [1]. Critical care medicine has been at the forefront of these efforts, with several commercial and non-commercial ICU databases having been developed in a number of countries [2]. Such databases have the potential to be socially very valuable, supporting research, education, and quality improvement initiatives [3]. Linking databases across centres and countries can also increase their generalisability and accelerate knowledge discovery [2]. While activities that effectively utilise routine data to optimise and individualise care are urgently needed, efforts to create and link such databases can be undermined by concerns about data protection. These concerns are only likely to intensify as available data for research becomes more finely grained and more diverse (e.g. medical images, physiological waveforms etc.). …