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Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life.

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More or Less: The digital ‘robots’ unlocking medical data

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The digital ‘robots’ unlocking medical data

17/02/2024 GMT

BBC World Service - More or Less, The digital ‘robots’ unlocking medical data

Ben Goldacre on OpenSAFELY, protecting patient privacy while analysing health data

Professor Ben Goldacre on OpenSAFELY, a system to let researchers investigate medical data while keeping its secrets safe

Big medical datasets pose a serious problem. Thousands of patients’ health records are an enormous risk to personal privacy. But they also contain an enormous opportunity – they could show us how to provide better treatments or more effective health policies. 

A system called OpenSAFELY has been designed to solve this problem, with the help of a computer code “robot”.  

Professor Ben Goldacre, director of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford, explains how it works. 
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Janet Staples
Sound mix: Hal Haines
Editor: Charlotte McDonald

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