Data sharing between organizations addressing social risk factors has the potential to amplify impact by increasing direct service capacity and efficiency. Unfortunately, the risks of and restrictions on sharing personal data often limit this potential, and adherence to regulations such as HIPAA and FERPA can make data sharing a significant challenge. Through the development of new technologies such as secure multi-party computation (MPC), communities have an opportunity to share individual-level data without exposing personally identifiable information (PII). In this white paper, we describe the process of using MPC technology to answer questions that can aid service providers in exploring the barriers that underserved populations may be facing. The first question we asked: what is the overlap of populations served by two distinct organizations? The results of the overlap analysis confirmed that a significant opportunity exists to increase access to services for a subset of individuals through better outreach.

Lessons learned in this project are already directly informing the technical work of other initiatives in the Tulsa community. Included in this white paper is an example of using MPC for shared data analysis, with lessons and insights that can be applied to other collaboratives and communities.