Portrait: Dr Thomas Bouchard, reproductive medicine clinician and HDS partner

Dr Thomas Bouchard is a clinician in reproductive medicine and a researcher. He is one of the first partners to use the HDS infrastructure in his clinical practice and research projects. We asked him three questions about his collaboration with the foundation.

How does delegating data controller responsibility to HDS change your approach to digital health?

I trust HDS to comply with all legal and regulatory requirements, which is an enormous undertaking. This allows me to focus on the scientific dimension: continuing to develop work that collects data from patients and research participants, without having to shoulder that massive part of the work on my own.

How does the HDS infrastructure help you build your new application with “security by design”?

My need is to connect with other partners, such as Mira, who use different cycle-tracking methods. The level of interoperability and security that HDS provides lets me build workflows that make my application both user-friendly and comprehensive, without my having to create a data centre or structure the data myself. Many others could do the same: build an accessible, easy-to-use application, integrated with HDS, which handles the data.

What data are you looking to collect to advance the science of reproduction?

To accelerate research in restorative reproductive medicine, I am specifically looking to track different menstrual cycle markers at multiple levels. I am building a large database of menstrual cycles, a “menstrual cycle registry.” I believe HDS is the only platform with both enough flexibility to integrate my variables and enough capacity to let me carry out a project of this scale.