Journal of investigative medicine : the official publication of the American Federation for Clinical Research
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Clinical researchers need to share data to support scientific validation and information reuse and to comply with a host of regulations and directives from funders. Various organizations are constructing informatics resources in the form of centralized databases to ensure reuse of data derived from sponsored research. The widespread use of such open databases is contingent on the protection of patient privacy. ⋯ Based on our analysis and observations we provide a list of recommendations that cover various technical, legal, and policy mechanisms that open clinical databases can adopt to strengthen data privacy protection as they move toward wider deployment and adoption.