Sharing Study Data Across Hospitals Without Breaking Consent

Multi-hospital studies are where research compounds: bigger cohorts, broader demographics, faster recruitment. They are also where the legal team starts asking pointed questions. Sharing patient data across institutions is not a technical problem; it is a consent and governance one.

The first rule: share studies, not raw patients. A platform should let one hospital share a study with another (or with specific researchers) while keeping the underlying patient records owned and access-controlled by the originating site. The receiving side sees only what consent and policy allow.

The second rule: every share is an event, not a state. Who shared what, with whom, on which date, and what consent basis it was granted under. Those questions will be asked eventually. Make sure your platform records the answer at the moment of the share, not after the fact.

Finally, design for un-sharing. Collaborators leave consortiums, consent gets withdrawn, agreements expire. If your only way to revoke access is a panicked Slack message to the platform admin, your governance model is not real yet.