deidentification
Stripping personal markers
Deidentification is the process of removing or obscuring personal information from data so individuals cannot be identified.
Common in healthcare, research, and data privacy contexts: The hospital deidentified patient records before sharing them with researchers.
Names, addresses, and social security numbers are typically stripped or replaced with codes.
The goal is enabling data use while protecting privacy.
Concealing by covering
- redactionObscuring sensitive text
- pseudonymizationSubstituting identifiers with artificial ones
- tokenizationConverting input into discrete units
- generalizationDeriving principles from examples
suppression · k-anonymity · blurring · hashing · encryption · randomization · aggregation · binning
Identifiable health data
- HIPAAMedical privacy statute
- safe harborProtected place for vessels
- medical recordsDocumented patient health history
- health dataInformation about bodily condition
patient records · business associate · authorization · disclosure · health plan · provider · patient privacy · EHR
Restricting resource availability selectively
- audit trailChronological record of transactions
- cybersecurityProtection of digital systems
- authenticationConfirming genuine identity
- authorizationFormal permission granted
logging · monitoring · vulnerability · secure storage · data retention · disposal · sanitization · chain of custody
People in experiments
- informed consentPermission given with understanding
- ethics boardBody overseeing professional conduct
- research ethicsMoral principles for investigations
- data sharingExchanging information between parties
reproducibility · clinical trial · epidemiology · biobank · scientific inquiry
Identity-revealing information
- consentVoluntary agreement given
- GDPREU data protection law
- data protectionSecuring sensitive information
- right to be forgottenLegal power to delete records
masking
Concealing by covering
- redactionObscuring sensitive text
- pseudonymizationSubstituting identifiers with artificial ones
- tokenizationConverting input into discrete units
generalization · suppression · k-anonymity · blurring · hashing · encryption · randomization · aggregation · binning · perturbation
PHI
Identifiable health data
- HIPAAMedical privacy statute
- safe harborProtected place for vessels
- medical recordsDocumented patient health history
patient records · health data · business associate · authorization · disclosure · health plan · provider · patient privacy · EHR
access control
Restricting resource availability selectively
- audit trailChronological record of transactions
- cybersecurityProtection of digital systems
- authenticationConfirming genuine identity
authorization · logging · monitoring · vulnerability · secure storage · data retention · disposal · sanitization · chain of custody · accountability
human subjects
People in experiments
- informed consentPermission given with understanding
- ethics boardBody overseeing professional conduct
- research ethicsMoral principles for investigations
data sharing · reproducibility · clinical trial · epidemiology · biobank · scientific inquiry
PII
Identity-revealing information
- consentVoluntary agreement given
- GDPREU data protection law
- data protectionSecuring sensitive information
deidentificationreidentification
Recognizing something previously known
identification · re-identification · personal identification · naming · labeling
deidentificationexposure
State of being unprotected
identification · unmasking · revealing · disclosure · naming
deidentify, deidentified, identification, identify, identified, identifier, identifiers, identifies, identifying