Improving Patients Privacy with Pseudonymization

Thomas Neubauer, Bernhard Riedl. Improving Patients Privacy with Pseudonymization. In Stig Kjær Andersen, Gunnar O. Klein, Stefan Schulz, Jos Aarts, editors, eHealth Beyond the Horizon - Get IT There, Proceedings of MIE2008, The XXIst International Congress of the European Federation for Medical Informatics, Göteborg, Sweden, May 25-28, 2008. Volume 136 of Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, pages 691-696, IOS Press, 2008. [doi]

Abstract

e-Health requires the sharing of patient related data when and where necessary. Electronic health records promise to improve communication between health care providers, thus leading to better quality of patients’ treatment and reduced costs. As highly sensitive patient information provides a promising goal (e.g., for attackers), there is an increasing social and political pressure to guarantee patients privacy. This paper presents the new system PIPE (Pseudonymization of Information for Privacy in e-Health), that differs from existing approaches in its ability to securely integrate primary and secondary usage of health data.