We implemented an approach where relevant concepts derived from computer science were adapted to define legal requirements for data bridges​. “Legal interoperability” is defined as an extension of the general interoperability concept for diverse systems​. In this concept the data bridges between infrastructures become “interfaces”​. The LAT presents a number of questions, which the user answers and LAT assesses the answers to show corresponding legal texts, data access rules and regulations.

1. Legal Assessment Tool
Wolfgang Kuchinke (HHU Düsseldorf)
Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf
EUDAT Sensitive Data Group Meeting
17.-18. Feb. 2017, Oslo

2. BioMedBridges
• BioMedBridges constructed an infrastructure to
allow interoperability between data and
services in the biological, medical, translational
and clinical domains
• Data bridges between biological and medical
sciences research infrastructures BBMRI,
EATRIS, ECRIN, ELIXIR, Infrafrontier,
INSTRUCT, ERINHA, EU-OPENSCREEN,
EMBRC, and Euro-BioImaging

3. Concepts
• We implemented an approach where relevant
concepts derived from computer science
were adapted to define legal requirements for
data bridges
• “Legal interoperability” as an extension of the
general interoperability concept for diverse
systems
• Planned data bridges become “interfaces”

4. Usage Scenarios
• Concepts were applied to five usage
scenarios representing different data
bridges
– Imaging Bridge, Phenotype Bridge,
Personalised Medicine Bridge, Structural
Data Bridge, and Biosample Data Bridge.

5. Databases involved in Phenobridge
Data provider
Cosmic, Catalogue of somatic mutations in cancer
ICGC, International Cancer Genome Consortium
TCGA, The Cancer Genome Atlas
EGA, European Genome-phenome archive
GEO Gene Expression Omnibus
Array-Express
ChEMBL
Reactome
Ensembl
Drugbank

6. Data flow as basis
• Data flow descriptions as basis for the
specification of legal and ethical
requirements
– Assembled in form of requirement clusters
• For each requirement cluster the
relevant regulations and guidelines
were analysed
• Requirements arranged according to
access rules, usage policies,
constraints, obligations, ...

7. Legal and Ethical Assessment Tool
• Answering a short survey
• LAT assess the given answers and
shows the legal texts and rules /
regulations, which are relevant for the
researcher’s situation
• Availability:
http://hhu2.at.xencon.de/web/guest/ass
essmenttool.

8. Decision pathway

14. Source
• See: Kuchinke W, Krauth C, Bergmann R, et al. Legal
assessment tool (LAT): an interactive tool to address
privacy and data protection issues for data sharing.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2016;16(1):81.
– Published 2016 Jul 7. doi:10.1186/s12911-016-0325-0
• Developed by: Töresin Karakoyun, Christian Krauth,
Benjamin Braasch, René Bergmann, Martin Eckert,
Wolfgang Kuchinke and Christian Ohmann