Most important is to predict potential data governance challenges and delays at the point of the research design and applying for funding, before applying for ethical review.
During the project, the whole team, from Principal asia rcs data Investigators, postdocs, research assistants and support staff need to be involved in data protection discussions and offer suggestions for data minimisation that won’t eliminate the validity of the analyses.
Ideally, studies should consider from the outset what will be possible to successfully anonymise the data without eliminating key associations, increasing the potential value and future uses of the data.
Where I once thought that working through these issues was just part of the ‘admin’, protection from multiple perspectives is a key part of the study design, particularly in the era of Open Research. It might take a while but eventually data protection will be accepted as part of the science rather than the admin.