Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35211336›Full record

ArticleJournal of clinical and translational science2022

Ensuring a safe(r) harbor: Excising personally identifiable information from structured electronic health record data.

Emily R Pfaff, Melissa A Haendel, Kristin Kostka, Adam Lee, Emily Niehaus, Matvey B Palchuk, Kellie Walters, Christopher G Chute

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of clinical and translational science, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Observational
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Emily R PfaffDepartment of Medicine, UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6840-9756
Melissa A HaendelUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, Colorado, USA.
Kristin KostkaThe OHDSI Center at the Roux Institute, Northeastern University, Portland, Maine, USA.
Adam LeeTraCS Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Emily NiehausPalantir Technologies, Denver, Colorado, USA.
Matvey B PalchukTriNetX LLC, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Kellie WaltersTraCS Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7473-1709
Christopher G ChuteSchools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Funding

Re-Entry Supplement: Investigation of Oral Microbial Enzymes for the Detection and Treatment of Periodontal DiseaseUL1TR002489 · NCATS · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · PI BUSE, JOHN BERNARD, SHAHEEN, NICHOLAS J · 2018 to 2022
$48.6M
CD2H - The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) IDeA CTR CollaborationU24TR002306 · NCATS · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER · PI CHUTE, CHRISTOPHER G, EICHMANN, DAVID A. · 2017 to 2021
$28.9M
NCATS NIH HHS U24 TR002306NCATS NIH HHS UL1 TR002489
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Recent findings have shown that the continued expansion of the scope and scale of data collected in electronic health records are making the protection of personally identifiable information (PII) more challenging and may inadvertently put our institutions and patients at risk if not addressed. As clinical terminologies expand to include new terms that may capture PII (e.g., Patient First Name, Patient Phone Number), institutions may start using them in clinical data capture (and in some cases, they already have). Once in use, PII-containing values associated with these terms may find their way into laboratory or observation data tables via extract-transform-load jobs intended to process structured data, putting institutions at risk of unintended disclosure. Here we aim to inform the informatics community of these findings, as well as put out a call to action for remediation by the community.

Indexed as

data privacyElectronic health recordsmedical terminologies

Identifiers

PMID35211336
PMCPMC8826001

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.