The concept of using personal online datastores (PODs) to store and access personal data is emerging as a significant paradigm shift for the private storage and analysis of data. Services such as Solid enable this concept through cloud platforms and the web as the medium for secure, decentralised storage and exchange of data. The distributed nature of data vaults, with individuals having full access controls (self-sovereignty) over their own data, is key as society continues to be impacted by data breaches and AI developments. The open Solid specification enables the hosting and sharing of PODs on servers under the individual's control. This new paradigm allows a POD to be hosted on any server, whether in the cloud or on a personal computer, and fosters an ecosystem of privacy-respecting apps through which individuals can collect, control, store, and manage their own data.
This project demonstrates that using PODs, novel applications can be developed over decentralised data, where data is collected, stored, controlled, and owned by individuals.
The Australian National University (ANU) Software Innovation Institute (SII) is collaborating on a project led by the ANU School of Medicine and Psychology with ANT Neuro to use Solid PODs in a clinical trial started in March 2026. The team developed a suite of software to demonstrate a novel participant-centred model for data collection. During the trial, data will be encrypted, stored and managed in the participant's own POD, allowing the trials to be conducted remotely and at scale, supporting rapid testing, validation, and accelerated collection of research results for regulatory approval.
The data model developed for this project can be generalised to be used in similar clinical trials. This allows patients to share their data to new clinical trials and enables research using graph queries and modelling over shared patient data from many trials. This project demonstrates that using PODs, novel applications can be developed over decentralised data, where data is collected, stored, controlled and owned by individuals.
This work has been accepted and presented at the 4th Solid Symposium held in London, UK, 2026.