Researchers require permission to access sensitive biomedical datasets, which slows down research. Permission for accessing and sharing biomedical data is needed because the data has to comply with legal, ethical, and informed consent rules and regulations. The Data Use Ontology (DUO) standard is designed to streamline these processes.
For retrieving and reusing biomedical datasets, researchers must submit a data access request to Data Access Committees. This can be a long process as a typical workflow involves a manual review of applications against the data use letter that specifies how the dataset can be used, to determine whether access should be granted.
DUO annotations allow terms and definitions in data consent forms and data sharing policies to be standardized. It is a machine-readable standard vocabulary of data use terms, aiming at describing data use conditions and automating the matching of specific datasets against the data access requests. Pairing DUO with the GA4GH Passport further automates this step by providing a researcher’s authentication and authorization levels.
In simple terms, DUO supports a data authorization and access framework for permitting researchers to reuse biomedical datasets based on their credentials and research purposes. DUO, together with the GA4GH Passport standard, accelerates responsible sharing of biomedical datasets worldwide.
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