The opportunity and the constraint
Every hospital visit, lab result, and clinical trial generates carefully collected data that is typically analyzed once, for one purpose, and then archived. That archive describes real biology in real people — among the most valuable research material that exists. The constraint is consent and law: data collected for care or for one study cannot simply be copied into a new project.
How secondary use becomes lawful and practical
The accepted mechanism is governed, in-place analysis: the data stays with its custodian, each new use is separately approved, per-dataset consent terms are enforced by the platform, and outputs are reviewed before release. This is precisely what Trusted Research Environments were built for — Boehringer Ingelheim’s use of a federated TRE to bring clinical trial data back into early discovery is a working example.
Related terms
Data Harmonization · Five Safes Framework