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. 2015 Mar 20:350:h1139.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.h1139.

Anonymising and sharing individual patient data

Khaled El Emam  1 , Sam Rodgers  2 , Bradley Malin  3
Affiliations

Anonymising and sharing individual patient data

Khaled El Emam et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

There is a strong movement to share individual patient data for secondary purposes, particularly for research. A major obstacle to broad data sharing has been the concern for patient privacy. One of the methods for protecting the privacy of patients in accordance with privacy laws and regulations is to anonymise the data before it is shared. This article describes the key concepts and principles for anonymising health data while ensuring it remains suitable for meaningful analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: KEE and BM have financial interests in Privacy Analytics, a University of Ottawa and Children‘s Hospital of Eastern Ontario spin-off company which develops anonymisation software for the health sector.

Figures

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Extent of anonymisation that needs to be applied for different types of data releases balanced against other controls
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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