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- Title
Preserving temporal relations in clinical data while maintaining privacy.
- Authors
Hripcsak, George; Mirhaji, Parsa; Low, Alexander F. H.; Malin, Bradley A.; Low, Alexander Fh
- Abstract
<bold>Objective: </bold>Maintaining patient privacy is a challenge in large-scale observational research. To assist in reducing the risk of identifying study subjects through publicly available data, we introduce a method for obscuring date information for clinical events and patient characteristics.<bold>Methods: </bold>The method, which we call Shift and Truncate (SANT), obscures date information to any desired granularity. Shift and Truncate first assigns each patient a random shift value, such that all dates in that patient's record are shifted by that amount. Data are then truncated from the beginning and end of the data set.<bold>Results: </bold>The data set can be proven to not disclose temporal information finer than the chosen granularity. Unlike previous strategies such as a simple shift, it remains robust to frequent - even daily - updates and robust to inferring dates at the beginning and end of date-shifted data sets. Time-of-day may be retained or obscured, depending on the goal and anticipated knowledge of the data recipient.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The method can be useful as a scientific approach for reducing re-identification risk under the Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and may contribute to qualification for the Safe Harbor implementation.
- Subjects
UNITED States; RIGHT of privacy &; medical records; SAFE harbor; HEALTH insurance; GOVERNMENT policy; RISK assessment; ELECTRONIC health records; HEALTH Insurance Portability &; Accountability Act; PHYSICIAN-patient privilege; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL ethics; META-analysis; PRIVACY; RESEARCH funding; TIME
- Publication
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2016, Vol 23, Issue 6, p1040
- ISSN
1067-5027
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1093/jamia/ocw001