Neuroethics Resource Hub (NeRH)

Workgroup:  Ethics, Neural Data Privacy, and Data Security

Date Updated: 12 August 2025

Authors: Michael Young, MD, MPhil; on behalf of the iBCI-CC Ethics, Neural Data Security and Privacy Workgroup.

Overview:

NeRH (www.nerh.org) is a centralized hub that curates and centralizes neuroethics, neural data security and privacy resources for the clinical neurotechnology field, including but not limited to implantable BCIs. NeRH is currently in a password-protected environment (password: neuroethics), with plans to launch to open access in early September. Early versions were presented to the NIH BRAIN Initiative NEWG and at the UMass Boston BCI Symposium. NeRH is also built with the capacity to serve as an open-access repository for de-identified empirical-ethics datasets, instruments, and tools, explicitly designed as a community-wide resource for neurotechnology stakeholders, including but not limited to members of the iBCI community. 

Audience and Application:

As a living compendium of neuroethics resources for developers, clinicians, policymakers, and patient advocates, NeRH was built in response to recognition that guidance for responsible development and deployment of iBCIs and other clinical neurotechnologies remains fragmented across journals, policy archives, and grey literature often hard to locate or access. The lack of a curated, shared source and common vocabulary can slow protocol design, complicate governance, fragment practice, and impede reproducibility. Siloed efforts further limit the accumulation of generalizable ethics evidence and guidance for the iBCI field and clinical neurotechnology communities generally.  NeRH thus intends to serve the full spectrum of neurotechnology stakeholders, including clinicians and investigators involved in iBCI and other translational neurotechnology studies, developers, ethicists, IRB members, neural data stewards and security teams, policymakers, and patient advocates. Users can quickly find relevant resources and adapt them to local contexts or needs, as well as suggest new resources to include. Resources are searchable and filterable by type and keyword. NeRH is further built with the capacity to serve as an open-access repository for de-identified empirical-ethics datasets, instruments, and tools. NeRH thereby aspires to help teams access and incorporate best practices and precedent literature into operational practice from early-stage neurotechnology research through clinical deployment.