Carolyn Adams, Judy Allen, and Felicity Flack, Sharing Linked Data for Health Research: Toward Better Decision Making

Every health lawyer is aware of the importance of using data to better understand health and drive medical and scientific innovation. Fewer may be aware, however, of the importance of linking various sets of data to each other—in other words, bringing together sets of data from various sources relating to the same individual or event into a single file—as a primary means of accomplishing better understanding of health and driving innovation. These sources may comprise not only health data (eg cancer registries, births and deaths registries, immunisation registries, midwifery summary reports), but also other personal information gleaned from education, justice, housing, and social welfare data sets. Even fewer still, I reckon, may be aware that more often than not, the most valuable data collections are held by governments, and may contain individual-level data on whole populations. These collections are often termed government administrative data. Bland term aside, they offer incredible value for research.