Denmark has some of the most well-preserved and public data repositories in the world. Since the 1970s, successive governments have prioritised the development and maintenance of well-structured population datasets, gathering information on all aspects of citizens’ lives.

As society moves deeper into the Information Age, there is a growing discussion on the subject of digital rights and the subject of ownership, in particular. Also at this time, digital health records are becoming a highly valuable source of information for health researchers. However, one of the major obstacles researchers face is the time it takes to apply and receive access to relevant population health data, a process which can take between 12-18 months.

Donate Your Data is a service designed to allow individuals to receive ownership of their personal health data in order to make choices on how to donate their digital information for use in public health research studies. The service offers researchers the opportunity to instantly access digital health information according to the level of pre-consent that is selected by ‘data donors’. Donate Your Data makes it easier for researchers to gain legitimate access to historic and real-time population health data. The system behind the service is designed to handle personal health information in a trustworthy, transparent way by leveraging the power of a distributed ledger mechanism offered by the nascent technology, Blockchain.