Sharing private data for greater public good

After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the directmail marketing company Valassis shared its database with emergency agencies and volunteers to help improve aid delivery.

In Santiago, Chile, analysts from Universidad del Desarrollo, ISI Foundation, UNICEF and GovLab collaborated with Telef��nica, the city's largest mobile operator, to study gender-based mobility patterns in order to design a more equitable transportation policy.

And as part of the Yale University Open Data Access project, healthcare companies Johnson& Johnson, Medtronic and SI-BONE give researchers access to previously walled-off data from 333 clinical trials, opening the door to possible new innovations in medicine.