MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
UK Small Area Health Statistics Unit, MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Int J Epidemiol. 2020 Apr 1;49 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):i4-i14. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyz051.
In this era of 'big data', there is growing recognition of the value of environmental, health, social and demographic data for research. Open government data initiatives are growing in number and in terms of content. Remote sensing data are finding widespread use in environmental research, including in low- and middle-income settings. While our ability to study environment and health associations across countries and continents grows, data protection rules and greater patient control over the use of their data present new challenges to using health data in research. Innovative tools that circumvent the need for the physical sharing of data by supporting non-disclosive sharing of information, or that permit spatial analysis without researchers needing access to underlying patient data can be used to support analyses while protecting data confidentiality. User-friendly visualizations, allowing small-area data to be seen and understood by non-expert audiences, are revolutionizing public and researcher interactions with data. The UK Small Area Health Statistics Unit's Environment and Health Atlas for England and Wales, and the US National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network offer good examples. Open data facilitates user-generated outputs, and 'mash-ups', and user-generated inputs from social media, mobile devices and wearable tech are new data streams that will find utility in future studies, and bring novel dimensions with respect to ethical use of small-area data.
在这个“大数据”时代，人们越来越认识到环境、健康、社会和人口数据对于研究的价值。开放政府数据倡议的数量和内容都在不断增加。遥感数据在环境研究中得到了广泛应用，包括在低收入和中等收入国家和地区。虽然我们研究国家和大陆之间的环境和健康关联的能力不断增强，但数据保护规则和患者对其数据使用的更大控制，给在研究中使用健康数据带来了新的挑战。有一些创新的工具，可以规避数据共享的需要，支持非披露信息的共享，或者允许在研究人员无需访问基础患者数据的情况下进行空间分析，从而可以用于支持分析，同时保护数据的机密性。用户友好的可视化工具，允许非专业受众看到和理解小区域数据，正在彻底改变公众和研究人员与数据的交互方式。英国小区域健康统计单位的英格兰和威尔士环境与健康地图集，以及美国国家环境公共卫生跟踪网络，就是很好的例子。开放数据促进了用户生成的输出和“混搭”，以及来自社交媒体、移动设备和可穿戴技术的用户生成输入，这些都是新的数据来源，将在未来的研究中发挥作用，并在小区域数据的伦理使用方面带来新的维度。
