Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36120716›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in digital health2022

Measuring the impact of anonymization on real-world consolidated health datasets engineered for secondary research use: Experiments in the context of MODELHealth project.

Stavros Pitoglou, Arianna Filntisi, Athanasios Anastasiou, George K Matsopoulos, Dimitrios Koutsouris

Abstract read
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Article in Frontiers in digital health, 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
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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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

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Stavros PitoglouComputer Solutions SA, Research & Development Dpt., Athens, Greece.
Arianna FilntisiComputer Solutions SA, Research & Development Dpt., Athens, Greece.
Athanasios AnastasiouSchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
George K MatsopoulosSchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Dimitrios KoutsourisSchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Introduction: Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are essential data structures, enabling the sharing of valuable medical care information for a diverse patient population and being reused as input to predictive models for clinical research. However, issues such as the heterogeneity of EHR data and the potential compromisation of patient privacy inhibit the secondary use of EHR data in clinical research. Objectives: This study aims to present the main elements of the MODELHealth project implementation and the evaluation method that was followed to assess the efficiency of its mechanism. Methods: The MODELHealth project was implemented as an Extract-Transform-Load system that collects data from the hospital databases, performs harmonization to the HL7 FHIR standard and anonymization using the k-anonymity method, before loading the transformed data to a central repository. The integrity of the anonymization process was validated by developing a database query tool. The information loss occurring due to the anonymization was estimated with the metrics of generalized information loss, discernibility and average equivalence class size for various values of k. Results: The average values of generalized information loss, discernibility and average equivalence class size obtained across all tested datasets and k values were 0.008473 ± 0.006216252886, 115,145,464.3 ± 79,724,196.11 and 12.1346 ± 6.76096647, correspondingly. The values of those metrics appear correlated with factors such as the k value and the dataset characteristics, as expected. Conclusion: The experimental results of the study demonstrate that it is feasible to perform effective harmonization and anonymization on EHR data while preserving essential patient information.

Indexed as

anonymizationelectronic health recordsharmonizationinformation lossreal data

Identifiers

PMID36120716
PMCPMC9474677

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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.