Itzelle Medina-Perea

I hold a BA in Information Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an MA in Librarianship form the University of Sheffield. Before starting my PhD, I worked for several years as information professional. I have engaged in the planning, design and implementation of information services for different communities in Mexico and the UK.

Since I started my PhD I have had the opportunity to participate as teaching assistant in a number of modules within the iSchool at Sheffield, including Designing Usable Websites, Business Intelligence and Database Design. I have also delivered a number of lectures as guest speaker for postgraduate students in Data Protection, Information Rights and Health Information Governance.

I am currently working alongside other researchers from the University of Sheffield on Living with data, a research project which aims to understand people’s knowledge and perceptions of data practices, and what they think constitute ‘fair’ data practices. For more information about this project please visit: https://livingwithdata.org/

PhD project

This research explores the socio-cultural factors that promote, slow down, or block the movement of specific forms of personal patient data between different social actors within, and beyond, the health care sector in the UK.

Aim

To gain understanding of how socio-cultural factors influence the movement of particular types of patient data generated within the UK’s health care sector from their initial creation through to their use for secondary purposes in different contexts.

Expected outcomes          

• To generate new knowledge on how and why socio-cultural factors shape patient data flows within healthcare sector, and what this means for how data flows bring patients into different forms of relation with other social actors.

• To develop recommendations for ‘just’ practices in data sharing, and to make patient data flows within the health sector more clear and transparent for the public.

Supervisors

• Jo Bates
• Andrew Cox

Research interests

• Social and cultural factors that shape the movement of data
• Data protection and privacy issues in relation to the uses of personal data