title: Mapping health data: improved privacy protection with donut method geomasking.
abstract: A major challenge in mapping health data is protecting patient privacy while maintaining the spatial resolution necessary for spatial surveillance and outbreak identification. A new adaptive geomasking technique, referred to as the donut method, extends current methods of random displacement by ensuring a user-defined minimum level of geoprivacy. In donut method geomasking, each geocoded address is relocated in a random direction by at least a minimum distance, but less than a maximum distance. The authors compared the donut method with current methods of random perturbation and aggregation regarding measures of privacy protection and cluster detection performance by masking multiple disease field simulations under a range of parameters. Both the donut method and random perturbation performed better than aggregation in cluster detection measures. The performance of the donut method in geoprivacy measures was at least 42.7% higher and in cluster detection measures was less than 4.8% lower than that of random perturbation. Results show that the donut method provides a consistently higher level of privacy protection with a minimal decrease in cluster detection performance, especially in areas where the risk to individual geoprivacy is greatest.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, 27599-7030, USA.
authors.forename: Kristen H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Hampton
authors.forename: Molly K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Fitch
authors.forename: William B
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Allshouse
authors.forename: Irene A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Doherty
authors.forename: Dionne C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Gesink
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Leone
authors.forename: Marc L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Serre
authors.forename: William C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003219:Confidentiality; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D009657:North Carolina / Q000453:epidemiology; D011159:Population Surveillance
references.citation: Stat Med. 1999 Sep 15-30;18(17-18):2377-99
references.pmid: 10474147
references.citation: Am J Public Health. 2006 Nov;96(11):2002-8
references.pmid: 17018828
references.citation: J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2006 Mar-Apr;13(2):160-5
references.pmid: 16357353
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Nov 18;105(46):17608-13
references.pmid: 19015533
references.citation: Stat Methods Med Res. 2005 Feb;14(1):35-59
references.pmid: 15690999
references.citation: Stat Methods Med Res. 2005 Feb;14(1):17-34
references.pmid: 15690998
references.citation: Stat Med. 1999 Mar 15;18(5):497-525
references.pmid: 10209808
references.citation: Int J Health Geogr. 2009 Jul 20;8:46
references.pmid: 19619311
references.citation: Am J Epidemiol. 1998 Apr 1;147(7):709-16
references.pmid: 9554611
references.citation: N Engl J Med. 2006 Oct 19;355(16):1741-2
references.pmid: 17050904
references.citation: Am J Epidemiol. 1983 Jun;117(6):688-94
references.pmid: 6859024