Malcolm
Oswald PhD is Director of social enterprise Citizens Juries c.i.c., and an
Honorary Research Fellow in Law at the University of Manchester. He has worked
for many years on information governance in the NHS, including developing NHS
guidance on anonymisation.

He will talk about two citizens’ juries designed and run by the University of
Manchester, and the significance of these for public policy. The juries
explored questions about whether health data derived from patient records
should be used for purposes such as research and clinical audit, but also more
contentious uses of such data by commercial organisations e.g. for new drug
discovery.  Each jury brought together a
cross-section of citizens, 18 in each jury, to hear evidence from expert
witnesses. An independent oversight panel monitored for bias. The juries
deliberated together over 3 days, to reach conclusions about the questions they
were set.