TY - JOUR T1 - Consent and the ethical duty to participate in health data research JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics DO - 10.1136/medethics-2017-104550 SP - medethics-2017-104550 AU - Angela Ballantyne AU - G Owen Schaefer Y1 - 2018/01/22 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2018/01/22/medethics-2017-104550.abstract N2 - The predominant view is that a study using health data is observational research and should require individual consent unless it can be shown that gaining consent is impractical. But recent arguments have been made that citizens have an ethical obligation to share their health information for research purposes. In our view, this obligation is sufficient ground to expand the circumstances where secondary use research with identifiable health information is permitted without explicit subject consent. As such, for some studies the Institutional Review Board/Research Ethics Committee review process should not assess the practicality of gaining consent for data use. Instead the review process should focus on assessing the public good of the research, public engagement and transparency. ER -