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SCENS (the Secure Content Exchange Negotiation System) is a system
designed to make sharing and reuse easier for data that are valuable,
sensitive, or otherwise under constraint in their distribution. It
is essentially a centralized system containing a database of important
data features and attributes („metadata‰) derived from many parties‚ data
that mediates agreements between any of those parties who wish to
lease or obtain data from one another. It works by supporting negotiations
between the parties in a possible data exchange, recording conditions
on sharing and providing some safeguards and conveniences.
The system extends previous work on metaDLs (metadata digital libraries),
in which entities advertise their data holdings through a common,
structured metadata repository. SCENS functions as a broker of data
exchanges, thus documenting data usage, and also provides a receptacle
for collecting feedback. The negotiation model it represents is
powerful, with applications to many domains.
Our main SCENS project, funded by an NSF IDM grant, addresses the
problem of data sharing between healthcare organizations (or any
other medical data holders), which involves highly sensitive and
heterogenous data. Using our work in the analysis of mental health
imaging data as a prototype testbed, we are developing a system
that we hope will be simple to use, thus offering wide acceptability.
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