Privacy Preserving Publication of Longitudinal Health Data

Abstract

With the development of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Electronic Health Records(EHRs) huge amounts of Personal Health Information (PHI) are now being available and consequently demands for accessing and secondary use of such PHI are increasing. Despite its benefits, the use of PHI for secondary purposes has increased privacy concerns among public due to potential privacy risks arising from improper release and usage of person-specific health data [1]. To address these concerns, governments and ethics boards regulated a set of privacy policies for disclosing (identifiable) personal health data which requires that either consent of patients to be obtained or data to be de-identified before publication[2]. However, as obtaining consent is often not practical in secondary use contexts, data de-identification becomes a better -and sometimes the only- practical approach.

This work is part of a research project at the Electronic Health Information Lab, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.