Protecting privacy and promoting learning: blockchain and privacy preserving technology should inform new ethical guidelines for health data

Our current legal protections and ethical oversight have been insufficient for guarding against ethical violations involving our health data in the modern age. Concerns regarding the governance and privacy of health data are growing in tandem with calls for updated ethical guidelines for data-driven research. In this piece we discuss how blockchain technology and privacy preserving forms of computation may be foundational for new ethical guidelines given their potential to resolve the fundamental tensions between our concurrent obligations to protect individuals’ health data rights and to promote learning from health data for the good of society.