We Need Granular Sharing of De-Identified Data-But Will Patients Engage? Investigating Health System Leaders' and Patients' Perspectives on A Patient-Controlled Data-Sharing Platform
This research addresses the challenge of engaging patients and health system leaders in granular data-sharing for medical research, offering design implications for trustworthy systems, though it is incremental as it builds on existing work in patient-controlled data platforms.
The study investigated stakeholder perceptions of a patient-controlled data-sharing platform for de-identified medical data, finding that health system leaders and patients both valued transparency and autonomy but interpreted these factors differently, with leaders focusing on informed consent and ethics, and patients on risk safeguards.
Patient-controlled data-sharing systems are increasingly promoted as a way to empower patients with greater autonomy over their health data. Yet it remains unclear how different stakeholders, especially patients and health system leaders, perceive the benefits and challenges of enabling granular control over the sharing of de-identified medical data for research. To address this gap, we developed a high-fidelity prototype of a patient-controlled, web-based consent platform and conducted a two-phase mixed-methods study:semi-structured interviews with 16 health system leaders and a survey with 523 patient participants. While both groups appreciated the potential of such a platform to enhance transparency and autonomy, their views diverged in meaningful ways. Leaders viewed transparency and granular control through the lens of informed consent and institutional ethics, whereas patients interpreted these factors as safeguards against potential risks and uncertainties. Our findings underscore critical tensions such as individual control and research integrity. We offer design implications for building trustworthy, context-aware systems that support flexible granularity, provide ongoing benefit-centered transparency, and adapt to diverse literacy and privacy needs.