Computable Information Governance Contracts.

The risks of relinquishing control of electronic healthcare data for re-use in research are mitigated by the use of data sharing agreements and information governance procedures. These exist as legal, or quasi-legal, textual documents exchanged between data owners. Their existence outside of the digital realm leads to a situation where breaches of an agreement can only be detected and acted on post-hoc. We introduce the design of a system of computable contracts, specified formally, that can enforce the rules of data sharing agreements within the bounds of electronic health care systems.