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Population Data BC (PopData) is an innovative leader in facilitating access to linked data for population health research. Researchers from academic institutions across Canada work with PopData to submit data access requests for projects involving linked administrative data, with or without their own researcher-collected data. PopData and its predecessor-the British Columbia Linked Health Database-have facilitated over 350 research projects analyzing a broad spectrum of population health issues. PopData embeds privacy [...]

Current image sharing is carried out by manual transportation of CDs by patients or organization-coordinated sharing networks. The former places a significant burden on patients and providers. The latter faces challenges to patient privacy.

This study assessed the effectiveness of a fully automated surveillance system for the detection of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) in intensive care units. Manual ward surveillance (MS) and electronic surveillance (ES) were performed for two intensive care units of the Vienna General Hospital. All patients admitted for a period longer than 48 h between 13 November 2006 and 7 February 2007 were evaluated according to HELICS-defined rules for HCAI. The sensitivity [...]

To identify key principles for establishing a national clinical decision support (CDS) knowledge sharing framework.

Integration of patients' records across resources enhances analytics. To address privacy concerns, emerging strategies such as Bloom filter encodings (BFEs), enable integration while obscuring identifiers. However, recent investigations demonstrate BFEs are, in theory, vulnerable to cryptanalysis when encoded identifiers are randomly selected from a public resource. This study investigates the extent to which cryptanalysis conditions hold for (1) real patient records and (2) a countermeasure that obscures the frequencies of [...]

To try to lower patient re-identification risks for biomedical research databases containing laboratory test results while also minimizing changes in clinical data interpretation.

To determine what, if any, opportunity exists in using administrative medical claims data for supplemental reporting to the state infectious disease registry system.

This paper presents a coreference resolution system for clinical narratives. Coreference resolution aims at clustering all mentions in a single document to coherent entities.

Secondary use of clinical text is impeded by a lack of highly effective, low-cost de-identification methods. Both, manual and automated methods for removing protected health information, are known to leave behind residual identifiers. The authors propose a novel approach for addressing the residual identifier problem based on the theory of Hiding In Plain Sight (HIPS).

Underage alcohol use is the leading cause of preventable mortality among adolescents in the USA. Moreover, the average age of onset of underage drinking is 13 years. This study examined the feasibility of using a text messaging survey (TMS) to assess adolescent alcohol use. A sample of 29 adolescents, aged 13-17 years, was recruited from two primary care clinics. They completed a 16 question TMS while in the waiting room [...]