New study looks at re-identification risks

October 14, 2009

A recent study led by Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the CHEO Research Institute, found that the information in hospital prescription records can quite easily re-identify patients.

Information on drug prescriptions are a highly sought after commodity. Pharmaceutical companies like to access this data to fine tune their marketing and sales efforts. Many retail pharmacies in Canada sell their prescription records to commercial data aggregators who perform analyses for pharmaceutical companies; the potential privacy risk with such a practice is if the patients can be re-identified from this data. There is now more demand for this data from hospital pharmacies as well.

Dr. El Emam's study, titled "Evaluating the Risk of Re-identification of Patients from Hospital Prescription Records", demonstrates the importance of ensuring the proper de-identification of . The study demonstrates a methodology for deciding which data to keep and which to de-identify, since hospital prescription data contains details such as where patients live and when they were admitted to the hospital.

"A meaningful risk analysis requires an understanding of the nature of plausible re-identification scenarios" explained Dr. El Emam "and is typically performed with a hospital's privacy officer to ensure that the risk to patient re-identification remains as low as possible."

The risk analysis performed in this study provided a way to anonymize the hospital prescription data to maintain the privacy of the patients, by generalizing and removing some variables such as postal codes, admission and discharge dates, or gender, before they are shared with outside companies.

Dr. El Emam's first article was published in the July-August issue of the Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy and explains how he went about analyzing the data and finding the right combination of variables to ensure the privacy of hospital patients.

In a different study published earlier this year titled "Evaluating predictors of geographic area population size cutoffs to manage re-identification risk" Dr. El Emam performed the same risk analysis on the information released by retail pharmacies in Canada. The conclusion was that the risk of re-identifying patients from these prescription records was very small, and the privacy risks were consequently also small. This highlights the point that privacy risks in prescription records does depend on the source: retail vs. hospital.

Source: Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute


Rank not rated yet
Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Injured boomers beware: Know when to see doctor

(AP) -- It happened to nurse Jane Byron years after an in-line skating fall, business owner Haralee Weintraub while doing "men's" push-ups, and avid cyclist Gene Wilberg while lifting a heavy box.

Medicine & Health / Health

created 46 minutes ago | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain, reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice

Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The researchers' findings, published in the journal Science, show t ...

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (53) | comments 21 | with audio podcast

Green tea found to reduce disability in the elderly

(Medical Xpress) -- A lot of research has been done over the past several years looking into the health benefits of green tea. As a result, scientists have found that regular consumption of the beverage leads ...

Medicine & Health / Health

created Feb 07, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 11 | with audio podcast report

Teen school drop-outs three times as likely to be on benefits in later life

Teen school drop-outs are almost three times as likely to be on benefits in later life as their peers who complete their schooling, indicates research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Medicine & Health / Health

created Feb 06, 2012 | popularity not rated yet | comments 13

To perform with less effort, practice beyond perfection

Whether you are an athlete, a musician or a stroke patient learning to walk again, practice can make perfect, but more practice may make you more efficient, according to a surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Feb 09, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (15) | comments 6 | with audio podcast


Google might launch Drive for cloud storage soon

(PhysOrg.com) -- Google's next big move, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a cloud storage service called Drive. Hardly first to the plate, Google is simply catching up to introducing its cloud reposi ...

Latin America mining boom clashes with conservation

Latin America is experiencing a mining boom as prices rise fuelled by a hike in global demand, but the region is also being hit by a wave of violent protests, strikes and rallies by environmentalists.

Love a click away in Indonesia's Twitter Republic

He was a geeky kid from Yogyakarta, she a glamorous city girl in Jakarta. In a country with one of the world's most vibrant social networking scenes they fell in love on Twitter.

Europeans protest controversial Internet pact

Tens of thousands of people marched in protests in more than a dozen European cities Saturday against a controversial anti-online piracy pact that critics say could curtail Internet freedom.

Walney offshore wind farm is world's biggest (for now)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Walney wind farm on the Irish Sea--characterized by high tides, waves and windy weather--officially opened this week. The farm is treated in the press as a very big deal as the Walney ...

Navy to begin tests on electromagnetic railgun prototype launcher

The Office of Naval Research (ONR)'s Electromagnetic (EM) Railgun program will take an important step forward in the coming weeks when the first industry railgun prototype launcher is tested at a facility ...