title: Protecting the privacy of individual general practice patient electronic records for geospatial epidemiology research.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  General practitioner (GP) practices in Australia are increasingly storing patient information in electronic databases. These practice databases can be accessed by clinical audit software to generate reports that inform clinical or population health decision making and public health surveillance. Many audit software applications also have the capacity to generate de-identified patient unit record data. However, the de-identified nature of the extracted data means that these records often lack geographic information. Without spatial references, it is impossible to build maps reflecting the spatial distribution of patients with particular conditions and needs. Links to socioeconomic, demographic, environmental or other geographically based information are also not possible. In some cases, relatively coarse geographies such as postcode are available, but these are of limited use and researchers cannot undertake precision spatial analyses such as calculating travel times.
  
  
  METHODS
  We describe a method that allows researchers to implement meaningful mapping and spatial epidemiological analyses of practice level patient data while preserving privacy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This solution has been piloted in a diabetes risk research project in the patient population of a practice in Adelaide.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The method offers researchers a powerful means of analysing geographic clinic data in a privacy-protected manner.
authors.affiliation: Australian Primary Healthcare Research Institute, Australian National University, Australian Capital Territory.
authors.forename: Soumya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mazumdar
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Konings
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hewett
authors.forename: Nasser
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bagheri
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: McRae
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Del Fante
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003219:Confidentiality; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D005260:Female; D058006:General Practice; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010355:Patient Identification Systems; D018907:Privacy
keywords: Australia; Geographical Information Systems (GIS); confidentiality; de-identified data; general practice (GP) data collection; geospatial; privacy