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Environmentally responsible human genomic data governance: points for consideration.

We introduce five points for integrating environmental ethics into human genomic data governance: (i) recognizing the ethical imperative to consider environmental impacts of human genomic data; (ii) fostering collective responsibility for environmental harms; (iii) prospectively assessing benefits and harms; (iv) anticipating barriers to integration of environmental ethics into genomic data governance; and (v) meaningfully engaging all interest-holders. These points will be useful to all involved in the genomic data ecosystem.

Letter

The European Health Data Space and the Secondary Use of Sensitive Health Data.

INTRODUCTION: The European Health Data Space (EHDS) is one of the European Union's most ambitious data-governance projects. It aims to create a common framework through which electronic health data can be accessed and reused across Member States for care, research, innovation, policy, and public-interest purposes. Its practical viability depends not only on digital infrastructure, but also on legal, ethical, and organisational harmonisation, particularly for genetic and genomic data. METHODS: This paper examines the EHDS with emphasis on the secondary use of health data. It reviews the EHDS institutional architecture, discusses Finland's Findata as a national model for structured access, and analyses challenges for data holders and data donors, including interoperability, governance burdens, privacy protection, residual re-identification risk, and genomic-data sensitivity. RESULTS: A cross-border cancer-genomics case study shows that the EHDS can streamline data discovery and the routing of access requests, but does not by itself eliminate legal fragmentation, heterogeneous ethics review, and consent-related barriers. DISCUSSION: Effective implementation will require harmonisation beyond infrastructure, including clearer consent standards, more consistent ethics procedures, interoperable metadata, and proportionate safeguards for genomic data.

Electronic Health Records

Toward ethical provenance tracking: The GA4GH model data access agreement (DAA).

PURPOSE: Standardizing contractual clauses that govern data access enables research institutions to responsibly steward genomic and related health data while enabling its efficient downstream reuse. METHODS: We describe a document analysis study using both qualitative and comparative law analytical approaches to identify the most common categories of clauses from 29 different data access agreements used by human biomedical research consortia globally. We furthermore characterized the legal positions and standard practices for each common element of the agreement and synthesized across them to develop model clauses. A total of 3 discussion sessions were organized virtually to refine the clauses among members of the Ethical Provenance Subgroup of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health. RESULTS: We developed 15 unique data access clauses corresponding to the most common legal elements identified in the sampled agreements. CONCLUSION: Model clauses can be used to drive administrative efficiencies and institutional compliance for managing access to human genomic data for research. Additional machine-readable consents and software solutions are needed to support traceable "ethical provenance" of human genomic data and communicate data use conditions throughout the data's life-cycle.

Humans

Antibiotic-impregnated bone graft to prevent infection after total hip arthroplasty (ABOGRAFT): protocol for a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

INTRODUCTION: Studies have shown promising results using bone graft as a carrier for local administration of antibiotics to reduce the risk of prosthetic joint infection (PJI). The objective of this clinical trial is to determine if tobramycin and vancomycin-impregnated bone graft is safe and effective in reducing the rate of PJI after total hip arthroplasty (THA). METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This study is an international, randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical drug trial. Patients scheduled for THA (n=1100) requiring bone grafting (excluding revisions due to an ongoing infection) are randomised in a 1:1 ratio to prophylactic treatment with tobramycin and vancomycin or placebo-impregnated bone graft.The primary outcome is the time to reoperation due to infection or diagnosis of PJI, expressed as a relative risk difference between the two groups. A risk reduction of at least 50% is considered clinically relevant. Secondary outcomes are time to and reason for reoperation and implant revision, type of micro-organism and antibiotic susceptibility pattern within 2 and 5 years after surgery. Safety outcomes are the number of adverse events and revision rate due to aseptic loosening. The primary analysis will be performed using proportional hazard models. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has been approved under the Clinical Trial Regulation No 536/2014 (EU CT; 2024-510921-25-00). Results will be published in open-access peer-reviewed journals and disseminated to patient organisations and the media, and de-identified individual participant data will be curated and shared on reasonable request in accordance with the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse principles, subject to the laws and regulations governing data protection in each participating country. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05169229.

Humans

Investing in Canada's nursing workforce: a comprehensive review to inform policy innovations and directions.

BACKGROUND: Health systems worldwide face persistent health workers challenges including nursing shortages, workforce strain, and inequities. In Canada, these challenges have prompted renewed national and provincial reforms to strengthen recruitment, retention, leadership, and sustainability. This paper compares nursing workforce policy directions across Canada, and international jurisdictions to inform policy and planning. METHODS: A cross-country comparative analysis of policies building on a comprehensive national funded review that included an umbrella review of 69 systematic reviews, a comparative policy review of nursing workforce strategies in five jurisdictions, and validation through national horizon-scanning and policy dialogues (n >100). Evidence was analyzed across system, organizational, and individual levels. RESULTS: At the system level, international jurisdictions demonstrate comprehensive, legislated approaches integrating data, governance, and multi-year funding have advanced key nursing strategies. In Canada, the advances show the importance of strategies to have national and provincial/territorial alignment emphasizing leadership, flexibility, and inclusion as key levers. Organizational and individual-level reforms such as mentorship, leadership development, and wellness initiatives are expanding but remain variably evaluated. Experts identified national workforce data strategies and policy integration with embedded evaluation as key enablers to inform scalability and sustainability of implemented strategies. CONCLUSIONS: Canada's nursing workforce reforms are advancing toward coordinated, equity-driven, and evidence-informed strategies. Continued investment in evaluation, leadership, and national integrated data systems along with integrating nursing workforce planning within broader intersectoral planning will consolidate these gains and position Canada as an international leader in sustainable nursing workforce policy.

Canada

A Digital Tool for Clinical Evidence-Driven Guideline Development by Studying Properties of Trial Eligible and Ineligible Populations: Development and Usability Study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical guideline development preferentially relies on evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). RCTs are gold-standard methods to evaluate the efficacy of treatments with the highest internal validity but limited external validity, in the sense that their findings may not always be applicable to or generalizable to clinical populations or population characteristics. The external validity of RCTs for the clinical population is constrained by the lack of tailored epidemiological data analysis designed for this purpose due to data governance, consistency of disease or condition definitions, and reduplicated effort in analysis code. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop a digital tool that characterizes the overall population and differences between clinical trial eligible and ineligible populations from the clinical populations of a disease or condition regarding demography (eg, age, gender, ethnicity), comorbidity, coprescription, hospitalization, and mortality. Currently, the process is complex, onerous, and time-consuming, whereas a real-time tool may be used to rapidly inform a guideline developer's judgment about the applicability of evidence. METHODS: The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-particularly the gout guideline development group-and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network guideline developers were consulted to gather their requirements and evidential data needs when developing guidelines. An R Shiny (R Foundation for Statistical Computing) tool was designed and developed using electronic primary health care data linked with hospitalization and mortality data built upon an optimized data architecture. Disclosure control mechanisms were built into the tool to ensure data confidentiality. The tool was deployed within a Trusted Research Environment, allowing only trusted preapproved researchers to conduct analysis. RESULTS: The tool supports 128 chronic health conditions as index conditions and 161 conditions as comorbidities (33 in addition to the 128 index conditions). It enables 2 types of analyses via the graphic interface: overall population and stratified by user-defined eligibility criteria. The analyses produce an overview of statistical tables (eg, age, gender) of the index condition population and, within the overview groupings, produce details on, for example, electronic frailty index, comorbidities, and coprescriptions. The disclosure control mechanism is integral to the tool, limiting tabular counts to meet local governance needs. An exemplary result for gout as an index condition is presented to demonstrate the tool's functionality. Guideline developers from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network provided positive feedback on the tool. CONCLUSIONS: The tool is a proof-of-concept, and the user feedback has demonstrated that this is a step toward computer-interpretable guideline development. Using the digital tool can potentially improve evidence-driven guideline development through the availability of real-world data in real time.

Humans

"It just feels morally not right to Sell the data": Ethical and social perspectives on human genomic data sharing in Uganda-A phenomenological qualitative study.

While genomic data sharing enhances transparency and research efficiency, it also raises significant ethical and social challenges. This study explored stakeholders' perspectives on these issues, particularly around privacy, confidentiality, and equity in collaborative research. A phenomenological qualitative study was conducted between August and December 2023 at Makerere University College of Health Sciences, other research-intensive institutions, and national regulatory bodies. The study engaged 86 participants: 47 key informants (16 researchers, 14 ethics committee members, nine community advisory board members, and eight research regulators) and four deliberative focus group discussions with 39 participants. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 14. Three major themes emerged: (1) stakeholders' experiences in genomic research, including their roles as participants, implementers, or overseers; (2) ethical concerns, such as informed consent, third-party data access, inequities between high-income and low- and middle-income country (LMIC) researchers and participants, and the lack of benefit-sharing frameworks; and (3) social implications, including stigma, discrimination, labeling, community perceptions of fairness, and the need for meaningful engagement. Participants emphasized the importance of protecting participant rights, promoting equity, and ensuring robust data governance and security. The theoretical frameworks of principlism and distributive justice provided a valuable lens for examining these concerns, particularly by highlighting the need to safeguard privacy and fairly distribute responsibilities and benefits in global collaborations. Participants also noted that perceptions of fairness are shaped by trust, local context, and past experiences with research factors that are critical for building equitable and respectful partnerships. This study underscores the urgent need to strengthen protections for research participants and promote fairness in genomic data sharing. Policies should, if adopted, emphasize culturally contextualized consent, active community engagement, restricted third-party data access, and strong data protection mechanisms to address existing inequities and prevent misuse.

LMICs

Development of a Blockchain-Based Platform to Enable Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Shared Research Participation With Indigenous Communities: Technology Prototyping and Community Engagement Study.

BACKGROUND: Historic and ongoing problematic practices regarding the collection, storage, and use of Indigenous health data have led to the need to ensure principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) are followed in research practices and technology development. OBJECTIVE: This project, a partnership between UC San Diego and the Native BioData Consortium (NativeBio), sought to explore the practical application of blockchain technology and its potential to facilitate Indigenous-led research collaboration. METHODS: This project first undertook purposeful relationship building with NativeBio to form a Community Advisory Board (CAB) for identifying community and technology needs for a blockchain research collaboration platform with an initial focus on genomic data. Over a 2-year project period, a series of public meetings and presentations at Indigenous-led conferences introduced the concept of exploring compatibility between blockchain and IDS principles, followed by iterative prototyping and co-design of a blockchain platform with NativeBio, using Ethereum as the underlying protocol. RESULTS: Direct engagement with NativeBio and the CAB informed the initial design and development of a "b-IDS" proof-of-concept (POC) blockchain platform. The POC consists of three main components: (1) the web front-end layer, (2) the Ethereum network that executes the smart contract and blockchain storage aspects of the framework, and (3) the back-end database that stores off-chain interactions and data for future use with external genomic data repositories. After refinement of the POC, a community-based participatory research (CBPR) use case aligned with IDS principles was identified as a practical workflow and incorporated into the design of the POC for implementation. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from this project demonstrated the potential use of operationalizing IDS through blockchain technology with proactive and sustained engagement with Indigenous partners. Blockchain technology may have certain advantages over other data governance approaches and systems, facilitating timely oversight, shared decision-making and consent structures, and direct involvement of Indigenous communities in technology design, respecting the core principles of IDS and CBPR. Future development of the blockchain-IDS POC will need to incorporate other research practices and ethics frameworks to expand its use to other public health and biomedical research use cases.

Blockchain

Listening forward: emerging roles of bioacoustics in ecology, evolution, and conservation.

Bioacoustics is increasingly shifting from a mostly descriptive pursuit to one that can anticipate ecological change. Recent innovations-from autonomous recording units and edge-computing sensors to speech-inspired feature extraction and machine-learning techniques like transfer learning, unsupervised discovery, and explainable AI-are transforming the study of animal communication. These advances let us work at scales previously difficult to imagine. Automated species recognition, individual identification, and even tracking cultural evolution over decades are now within reach. Entire ecosystem soundscapes can be mapped with unprecedented resolution. Looking ahead, global listening networks, adaptive acoustic indices, and live biodiversity dashboards seem increasingly realistic. We may soon build digital models that simulate communication networks under future scenarios. Closer integration with genomics, physiology, and robotics could link vocal traits to their genetic, physiological, and ecological drivers. Challenges remain, including data governance, acoustic privacy, and equitable access to the planet's sonic heritage. Bioacoustics may be on the way to becoming a predictive, integrative science - one particularly well suited to monitoring, interpreting, and helping safeguard life's communication systems in a rapidly changing world.

Animals

Cigarette consumption per adult of each sex in various countries.

Estimates of cigarette consumption per adult male and female available from surveys in eight countries are examined and the figures of national consumption per adult implied by the surveys are compared with national averages obtained from government data and other sources. The errors likely to be found in the surveys are considered and corrected figures are calculated. Estimates are also made of cigarette consumption per woman of childbearing age.

Adolescent

Multimodal artificial intelligence and machine learning in oncology: from data integration to precision cancer care.

Cancer remains a major global health burden, with approximately 20 million new cases and 9.7 million cancer-related deaths reported globally in 2022. While advances in radiological imaging, molecular profiling, and clinical data have enhanced the interpretation of disease progression, the availability of multiple such modalities still does not meet the needs of a large patient population. This narrative review focuses on the role of multimodal artificial intelligence and machine learning in bridging the gap in interpreting heterogeneous modalities to improve risk prediction, prognostic assessment, and treatment decision-making in precision oncology. Multimodal frameworks such as Pathomic Fusion illustrate how complementary histopathological and genomic information can be integrated for cancer diagnosis and prognostic modeling. Multimodal models have demonstrated potential in virtual biopsy, cancer screening, prognostic prediction, radiotherapy planning, intraoperative guidance, and clinical-trial design using digital twins and synthetic control arms. The major limitations of incorporating multimodal artificial intelligence and machine learning in oncology include data heterogeneity, demographic or institutional biases, and reproducibility challenges that hinder translation. Accordingly, appropriate data-governance strategies, fairness audits, and privacy-preserving approaches such as federated learning should be considered where appropriate. Future progress will depend on the development of standardized benchmarking datasets, robust external validation, seamless integration with electronic health records and picture archiving and communication systems, and the implementation of explainable, secure, and clinically validated multimodal artificial intelligence frameworks that support precision oncology in routine clinical practice.

deep learning

From Infection Control to Healthcare System Resilience: Lessons Learned from SARS-CoV-2 Research in Healthcare Workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressure on healthcare systems and exposed healthcare workers (HCWs) to biological hazards, organizational pressures, and psychological strain. Evidence generated during the emergency shows that HCW protection cannot rely on isolated measures, but requires an integrated framework combining epidemiological surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, vaccination, occupational health, and workforce support. Contact tracing helped identify occupational exposures and clarify how duration, proximity, and inadequate use of personal protective equipment jointly shaped infection risk. Subsequent studies of reinfection showed that susceptibility reflected the interaction of viral circulation, individual immunity, and vaccination status. Vaccination reduced the clinical impact of SARS-CoV-2 and supported service continuity, although uptake depended on trust, communication, and management of adverse event concerns. The pandemic also highlighted substantial economic consequences and a high burden of psychological distress and burnout among HCWs. Building on this evidence, future preparedness should translate these lessons into permanent, adaptable infrastructure rather than temporary emergency arrangements, integrating interoperable, AI-assisted surveillance capable of combining occupational, diagnostic, vaccination, and genomic data to detect emerging risks early, while ensuring robust data governance and human oversight. Equally central is the need to address long-term workforce vulnerabilities, including Long COVID, attrition, and burnout, through early identification, rehabilitation, flexible return-to-work models, and sustained psychosocial support. Achieving this requires structured multidisciplinary collaboration among occupational medicine, infection control, epidemiology, mental health, and digital health specialists, moving from fragmented infection-control protocols to an integrated, proactive, and learning-oriented preparedness strategy. Protecting HCWs is therefore not only an occupational safety priority but a foundational prerequisite for safe, equitable, and sustainable healthcare delivery during future infectious threats.

Humans

Ethical Governance of Open Data Across Biomedical Research, Healthcare, and Public Health: Privacy, Equity, Trust, and Controlled Access.

Open data has become central to biomedical research and public health, but health information is uniquely sensitive and difficult to share responsibly. In this narrative review, open data is considered as a spectrum of health-data sharing arrangements, ranging from public aggregate datasets to controlled-access repositories, federated analysis, and synthetic data. This narrative review synthesizes the scientific and societal rationale for greater openness with the ethical, legal, and governance constraints that shape what "open" can realistically mean in healthcare. We examine how data sharing supports reproducibility, machine learning, and more efficient research, while also enabling public health surveillance and learning health systems. Against these benefits, we analyze privacy and re-identification risks, consent challenges in large-scale secondary use, inequities including data colonialism, and tensions introduced by commercialization. We integrate lessons from prominent case examples spanning pandemic data sharing, genomic initiatives, population registries, patient-led rare disease infrastructures, and regional data spaces. Across these domains, experience suggests that durable progress depends less on unrestricted openness than on calibrated access, privacy-preserving architectures, clear accountability, and sustained public engagement. We conclude by proposing a pragmatic ethical orientation for healthcare open data: treat openness as a spectrum of controlled sharing arrangements, embed equity and reciprocity into governance, and institutionalize trust-building measures that can persist beyond emergencies and political cycles.

Data colonialism

The Genetic Data Market: Institutional Governance of Academic/Industry Research Partnerships for the Public Good.

The Trump Administration's cuts to research funding and opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion is destabilizing academic research. These attacks coincide with pointed government support for the private sector. But the conceptualization of academic versus private sector health research has historically been a false binary. Drawing on mixed methods research, this paper examines the genomic data market as an example of advantages and challenges of commercializing academic expertise. It also highlights the structural downsides of researchers individually navigating industry partnerships. While academia is currently being put in the unenviable position of being more likely to need the private sector to conduct research, with less federal funding to offer in exchange, structural pain points have existed for decades. This is an opportunity for academia to harness its powers of expertise and collective action to develop institutional policy to ensure academic/industry research is beneficial to the public health and diverse patient communities.

Humans

Advancing One Health genomics in Africa: opportunities and challenges for outbreak and antimicrobial resistance control.

SUMMARYAfrica's ongoing struggles with emerging epidemics and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) underscore the urgency of integrating pathogen genomics and surveillance systems into the continent's One Health strategy, particularly given the existing limitations in preparedness and technological resources. This review brings together current evidence on the growth of sequencing infrastructure, the development of regional genomic hubs, and the establishment of governance frameworks, while identifying critical challenges in data integration, bioinformatics capacity, and sustainable financing. Special focus is placed on the lack of African-based genomic data, with our analysis showing that only 1.82% of the global total is available. Case studies illustrate the immense potential and importance of pathogen genomics, giving policymakers a tangible sense of its impact. These examples demonstrate how genomic technologies integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming outbreak response, AMR surveillance, and stewardship programs by enabling early detection of zoonotic threats, mapping transmission pathways, and guiding vaccine development. However, to fully realize this scientific intel, it is essential to embed One Health pathogen surveillance within strong policy and system frameworks to ensure the translation of technical progress into lasting institutional capacity and sustainable impact. Long-term implementation depends on coordinated investment and advocacy across four interdependent pillars: data architecture, governance and sovereignty, human capital, and technical capacity.

Humans

Dental health of Louisiana residents based on the ten-state nutrition survey.

The dental health status of 4,006 residents of Louisiana was analyzed, based on data in the 1968-70 Ten-State Nutrition Survey funded by the U.S. Government. These data were based on examinations of census districts in which the average per capita income was in the lowest quartile for the nation. A considerable variation in the prevalence of dental diseases was found among the Louisiana residents according to age. The females examined had a slightly higher DMF (decayed, missing, and filled permanent teeth) score, a lower OHI (oral hygiene index) score, and a slightly lower PI (periodontal index) score than did the males. The dental caries attack rate did not vary much by race, but the whites examined had received a much greater amount of dental care than had their black counterparts. The OHI scores of the blacks were higher than those for the whites in both the debris and calculus components. The PI scores were higher for the blacks than for the whites. More white persons than blacks were edentulous; this result, however, tends to confirm the observation of increased dental care in white persons. The percentages of persons with periodontal disease and periodontal pockets were considerably higher among persons with incomes below the poverty level, and a greater percentage of blacks had incomes below that level. The data thus apparently indicate that the major determinants of dental health status in Lousiana are age and level of income; race appears to be the major determinant of the amount of dental care received.

Adolescent