Anonymization remains a powerful approach to protecting the privacy of health information
Thursday, December 8, 2011 - 15:30
in Health & Medicine
De-identification of health data has been crucial for all types of health research, but recent articles in medical and scientific literature have suggested that de-identification methods do not sufficiently protect the identities of individuals and can be easily reversed. A recent review conducted by researchers at CHEO entitled "A Systematic Review of Re-identification Attacks on Health Data" and published in PLoS ONE, did not uncover evidence to support this. "If re-identification rates were as high as some of these articles suggest, it would be worrisome," says lead author, Dr. Khaled El-Emam. "But our review did not support these claims there is no broad empirical support for a failure of anonymization."
