Data protection of research subjects

The research is carried out in compliance with data protection legislation: The processing of personal data and exercising the rights of data subjects are subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation, the national Data Protection Act and THL guidelines. The data will be  processed in a secure remote access environment maintained by Statistics Finland. The data is accessible only to researchers who have been granted a research permit. Terms of Use of Statistics Finland are followed in the remote access environment. It is not possible to report individual results. The ethical nature of the research is based on the guidelines for responsible conduct of research prepared by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity.

The data will be pseudonymised. Pseudonymisation means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific person without the use of additional information. Such additional information must be kept carefully separate from personal data.

The data on the genome will be summarised as a risk score describing the hereditary risk of a particular disease or other health-related factor. Although each person’s genome is unique, individuals cannot be identified based on their risk score.

If you have participated in the FINRISK 1992–2012, Health 2000/2011 or FinHealth 2017 studies by giving a sample and would like more information, the public notice can be found here.