The further use of data and samples for research purposes accounts for an increasingly growing proportion of all research projects conducted in Switzerland. Questions on Big Data and data sharing, e.g. also in the context of large national projects such as SPHN, are often in the foreground. In this context, swissethics has fundamentally revised the protocol templates for research projects of further use. With regard to projects submitted to the ethics committees under art. 34 HRA and where an exception to obtain the consent is requested from the ethics committee, there are new provisions: in future, more detailed information will be required on the efforts to obtain the consent from the participants or precise information on the size of the cohorts with and without consent. In principle, the consent is always required wherever it is possible to obtain it. The adaptations refer, among others, to the findings of a structured evaluation of the submitted research projects under art. 34 HRA, conducted under mandate of the FOPH (link), and to results of the SNSF-funded project BEHALF (link) from the working group of Prof. Dr. Effy Vayena, ETH Zurich.