Experience of de-identification system development for clinical research in tertiary hospital.
To protect patients' privacy and to improve the convenience of research, Asan Medical Center (AMC) has been developing a de-identification system for biomedical research, which mainly consists of three components: de-identification tool, search tool, and chart review tool. The de-identification tool can substitute a randomly assigned research ID for a hospital patient ID, remove the identifiers in the structured format, and mask them in the unstructured format, i.e., texts. The search tool can find the number of patients which satisfies given criteria. The chart review tool can provide de-identified patient's clinical data for review. We found that clinical data warehouse was essential for successful implementation of de-identification system, and this system should be tightly linked to an electronic institutional review board system for easy operation of honest brokers.
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
Soo-Yong
SY
Shin
Yongman
Y
Lyu
Yongdon
Y
Shin
Hyo Joung
HJ
Choi
Jihyun
J
Park
Woo-Sung
WS
Kim
Jae Ho
JH
Lee
D022126:Access to Information; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000592:standards*; D016494:Computer Security / Q000592:standards*; D003219:Confidentiality / Q000592:standards*; D019983:Guideline Adherence / Q000592:standards; D020408:Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000592:standards*; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000592:standards*; D056910:Republic of Korea; D062606:Tertiary Care Centers / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States