Step 3. Build and maintain relationships with your data sharing partners

Trust is a fundamental, core requirement of health data ecosystems. The health data ecosystem is complex, and for many actors to achieve their goals, they need support from and alignment with others (see roles and responsibilities play). When sharing or accessing data, organisations need to be able to trust those they are interacting with and feel comfortable doing so.

We know that trust is relational: organisations need to demonstrate their trustworthiness to specific audiences rather than to the world in general. Building relationships with partners, based on shared principles and values, can help to build trust and assess trustworthiness.

It can help to create a shared document that:

• describes the need for data sharing to achieve the defined purpose/goal

• speaks directly to each stakeholder/audience

• draws on evidence of proven successes

• describes broadly how data sharing contributes to societal benefits and improved health outcomes for all.

Key actions to take:

• Describe the overall purpose/benefit you are seeking to generate from the data sharing activity (Step 1 in this play). This can be used as your broad statement to describe the benefits of data sharing.

• Review the purposes and audiences you identified for data sharing (Step 1 in this play). For each audience, list what benefits you think they would like to see from greater sharing of health data. Can you describe the purpose of your data sharing objectives in terms of how it will help create these specific benefits that each audience is seeking?

• List the core principles that will guide your data sharing partnerships and data sharing project goals (Step 2 in this play).

• Create a communication asset that pulls together these messages in a few slides or a short briefing. This could include: the overall purpose/benefit of the data sharing project; a page for each audience that specifically describes the benefits they are expected to receive, and how risks will be managed; a summary page that describes the benefits overall and for society from data sharing.

• Continue with the other chapters in the Data Sharing section of this playbook, including identifying and managing risks, and considering the type of agreement that is most suitable to the data sharing partnership.