Privitar Launches Patient De-ID Process for NHS

In the UK, privacy engineering company Privitar has developed a software solution for the 'de-identification' of patient information, to help NHS Digital improve the way that data is used across the NHS and social care.

De-identification is the process used to prevent a person's identity from being connected with their information. The new process, known as De-ID, is designed to de-identify a person's records in a consistent way, so that when the right legal basis, controls and safeguards are in place, data can be linked across different care settings and geographic boundaries.

Tom Denwood (pictured), NHS Digital's Executive Director of Data, Insights and Statistics, explains: 'Although we already use various ways of de-identifying data across the NHS, the difference with De-ID is that it provides one, consistent way of doing this. So instead of each individual NHS team managing their own de-identification processes, De-ID provides an automated and standardised way of removing the identifying values in a patient record across all data collections, allowing data to be linked across different care settings. It's not only more efficient; enabling us to safely produce useful data for research and analysis, but it's also transparent, so we can improve tracking and auditing of how data is used across the system'.

Web site: www.privitar.com .