Francesca Blythe

Sidley Austin

Francesca Blythe advises international clients on a wide range of data protection and privacy issues and the implementation of data protection compliance projects. Her main areas of practice are data protection, privacy, e-commerce and information technology. Francesca was previously in-house counsel at the largest international health and beauty retailer in Asia and Europe. Whilst there she regularly gave advice on compliance and strategies relating to data protection laws, including subject access requests, privacy impact assessments, direct marketing campaigns, biometrics and employee monitoring. She also assisted in the planning and delivery of a UK-wide privacy audit and managed a global privacy compliance project. Francesca is recognized in The Legal 500 UK 2017 for Data Protection, Privacy and Cybersecurity, with clients describing her as ''impressive, experienced and incredibly personable.''

Contributed to

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Conducting clinical research—data protection implications

Practice notes

This Practice Note explores the data protection implications of conducting clinical research. In particular, this Practice Note considers the responsibility for data protection compliance in the context of clinical research, the relevant legal grounds for processing personal data for research purposes, transparency requirements, collaborative research and data sharing as well as exceptions to data subject rights when processing personal data in the context of research. Finally, this Practice Note provides a checklist of practical data protection considerations to bear in mind when planning research activities.

Life Sciences

mHealth—data protection considerations

Practice notes

Digital health developers, manufacturers and distributors of mobile health (mHealth) apps, and any connected software as medical devices (SaMD) or artificial intelligence (AI) system, must comply with significant data protection regulations in parallel with regulatory compliance throughout the life cycle of an app’s development and commercialisation to market. This Practice Note focuses on the data protection and privacy considerations for mHealth apps, devices or connected medical software (SaMD) in the UK and EEA. mHealth, like telehealth, is a subset of eHealth under the digital health umbrella and refers to the use of mobile applications to allow users to monitor, evaluate and improve their health using mobile devices. Further discussion addresses the more stringent protections required for health data referred to as ‘special category’ data or ‘sensitive’ personal data.

Life Sciences