De-Identified Patient Data

De-identified patient data: Removal of important identifiers (Birth date, gender, address, age, etc) from the patient data before it is used for research or other purposes. Information is de-identified when it is not possible to 'reasonable ascertain' the identity of a person from that data. This depends on the context.The definition of Irreversible de-identification of data is context driven. The capacity of re-identify de-identified data may depend critically on particular resources( Intellectual, Information Technology, Access to multiple data sets).(1) Efforts are being made for automatize the anonymization of health information by developing de-identifications models that can successfully remove personal health information.

1. Australian Government. Office of the Privacy Commissioner.