The University of California at San Francisco has gathered teams across its departments to scrub health data of personally identifiable information at record speed, making entire records available for data analysis.
The new system, created by UCSF's IT department, privacy office, Computational Health Sciences Institute and Clinical and Translational Science Institute, creates two data sets that obscure patients' identities while protecting data.
"The premise is if the complete clinical record can be provided without being linked to patient names and other demographic information, researchers can use it without IRB (independent review board) review," the UC's blog reads.
“The goal,” said David Dobbs, UCSF's executive director of data analytics, “is not to have a one-time data set but to refresh every month, and so we want to not to have to be re-audited.” As long as the parameters of what is included in the data warehouse don't change, he said, the auditors’ privacy certification will stay in effect.
More on the project can be found here.
