Archie Campbell

Chief Technology Officer, Generation Scotland, chats to us

Hi Archie, could you tell us a littel about your role and any issues around data protection you encoutner?

I have been working for the Generation Scotland biobank for 14 years in a variety of jobs, but mostly looking after the data and making it available to researchers. In that time we have done over 300 data releases, and contributed to over 200 publications. There aren’t any really dramatic findings, but most scientific progress moves in tiny steps (hopefully forward) rather than giant leaps.

We go to great lengths to protect the privacy of our volunteers, while making their data as widely available as possible for research. The recent introduction of GDPR just confirmed the precautions we have been taking for years. Our recent CovidLife series of online surveys raised some new issues such as gender identity and political bias for us to deal with. Later this year we are starting a new wave of recruitment to our main study which will now include 12-15 year olds, adding some extra complications to our ethics and governance, but we hope to become more representative of the whole range of the Scottish population.