Dear UCSF Community:

Partnerships with peer institutions and industry leaders are an important part of our strategy to accelerate our work across all of UCSF’s mission areas. When considering these relationships, we must ensure that potential partners can sufficiently protect and safeguard any sensitive data we share as part of our collaboration.

A task force comprising UCSF leaders in research, technology, and operations has been working to better understand the unique opportunities and challenges confronting UCSF in regard to our collaborations and partnerships with external entities that include sharing sensitive data. Generally, the task force recommended streamlining the process for setting up external collaborations and establishing efficient oversight of certain types of relationships that involve sharing sensitive data.

The work to implement these recommendations is underway. The first step is to activate an interim process to flag high-risk data sharing proposals for review by the UCSF Enterprise Information and Analytics Committee (EIA) led by Dr. Jennifer Grandis. Specifically, prior to executing a contract, our designated contracting teams will forward to the EIA proposed partnership contracts that involve:

• Sharing any UC-protected health information (PHI) outside of IRB-approved clinical trials
• Sharing sensitive UCSF data with high-risk countries or companies
  • Identified using Restricted Party Screening software from Visual Compliance^® and information from government and law enforcement authorities (e.g., FBI)
• Sharing de-identified sensitive data with:
  • Any commercial entity (domestic or international) or
  • Any colleges and institutes of higher learning outside of the U.S.

You will receive updates as we make progress toward implementation of the task force recommendations. Visit Supporting Secure Data-Sharing Partnerships for more information or contact [email protected] with questions.

We remain committed to supporting the UCSF community, including faculty, students, trainees, and staff, in pursuing partnerships that securely leverage and unleash the power of data to transform health, science, and education. Thank you in advance for your role in making this endeavor a success.

Sincerely,

Sam Hawgood, MBBS
Chancellor
Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Distinguished Professor

Joe Bengfort
Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer