Crossing borders securely: synthetic data and federated networks for privacy-preserving access to real-world data and emerging use cases

The demand for demographically and geographically diverse, high-quality, fit-for-purpose real-world data has been increasing to support regulatory and other healthcare decision making. Accessing and sharing healthcare data across sites, regions, and countries while ensuring data privacy has been a long-standing challenge. We discuss synthetic data and federated data networks as examples of emerging privacy-preserving technologies and provide real-life use cases from government, industry, and academia with their opportunities and challenges.