Contracted Research

SODA Project

Realising Realizing data together with people living with dementia and their caregivers

This was a subcontracted research by H2020 SCALABLE OBLIVIOUS DATA ANALYTICS (SODA) that is researching and developing data sharing technologies using Multi-Party Computing Technics (MPC). 

A partnership with Lancaster NeuroDropin Center, and Lancashire NHS Data Controller.

Leads: Malé Luján Escalante and Monika Buscher

Mutli-party computing (MPC) has the potential to offer ‘real time’ use of data and ‘live’ data comparison without sharing data, instead making data available for encrypted processing. To support MPC innovation, it is critical to understand perceptions and practices of data generation, sharing and processing and to support people in understanding its potential and risks.

Data transactions, far from neutral, are subjected to gender, class, race, personal history and contextual politics. Data subjects may or may not understand when and how they are providing data, what data sharing implies or even what data is. At the same time, data subjects have ideas, feelings and imaginaries, as well as diverse interests and concerns about data. At these intersections, a range of frictions arise.

SODA Project uses Ethics through Design to explore the spaces and knowledges emerging from using and designing medical data together with people living with dementia, caregivers, medical professionals and stakeholders, in the wider ecology of the social and material worlds of practicing wellbeing.

The project focuses on perceptions of what data is and practices of making (sense of) data, fears and perceived benefits of data sharing technologies, specifically MPC systems.

You can read all about SODA Project and Ethics through Design in this paper Ethics through Design