Use of Big Data and Ethical Issues for Populations With Substance Use Disorder

With expanding data availability and computing power, health research is increasingly relying on big data from a variety of sources. We describe a state-level effort to address aspects of the opioid epidemic through public health research, which has resulted in an expansive data resource combining dozens of administrative data sources in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse is a public health innovation that serves as an example of how to address the complexities of balancing data privacy and access to data for public health and health services research. We discuss issues of data protection and data access, and provide recommendations for ethical data governance. Keeping these issues in mind, the use of this data resource has the potential to allow for transformative research on critical public health issues. •Increasing data and computational availability means that clinical, public health, and health services research is increasingly relying on big data, including questions related to care for populations with substance use disorder.•We describe a state-level effort to address aspects of the opioid epidemic through public health research through the construction of the Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse, discuss the issues of data protection and data access, and provide recommendations for ethical data governance.•Major initiatives such as this requires intense focus on technical security for data safeguards, and the ethical production and use of data and may result in new knowledge at the intersection of health and social welfare that could not be gained otherwise.