Data Core 2.0: How Our Library Expanded the Secure Data Enclave across Institutions and into the Cloud

Background: Medical research frequently requires access to sensitive datasets, which stipulate access conditions, research purposes, and data retention or disposition requirements. These governance constraints, potentially combined with multi-institutional collaboration, lead to a tension between security and accessibility, and a need for an 'honest broker' to stand between researchers and the data. Medical libraries, with their expertise and understanding of data management, remote access issues, researcher needs, and licensing and contract management, are ideally suited to take on the role of managing institutional secure enclaves as the honest broker, and liaison between researchers, ITS, and data providers.

Description: Under the leadership of the library, our secure enclave "Data Core" has recently expanded to allow capacity for multi-institutional data sharing projects. This includes the construction of a learning healthcare system environment, which provides regular import and controlled export of patient data from a dozen hospitals. We have also hosted a series of projects that are part of the largest urban clinical network in the nation, providing data import from multiple sites, as well as the ability for researchers from multiple institutions to securely and efficiently access the data. Finally, recognizing limitations of existing on premise infrastructure for managing an economically scaleable enclave, we have collaborated with our ITS cloud team to build a number of cloud solutions for our patrons, that still meet the requirements of security and efficient access.

Conclusion: Our library's ability to understand the research needs of faculty, and the security needs of ITS, has allowed us to stand in the middle and ensure that data are appropriately handled, without imposing prohibitive burdens on the faculty and research staff. Our experience has now allowed us to expand to more complicated research projects, leveraging the technical and governance knowledge we have gained, and building from the trust researchers have in our ability to manage their projects.