[Med-privacy] Phil. Inquirer: editorial on Medical Record Privacy Feb 17, 2004

[Jon Merz]

At 8:51 AM -0500 2/18/04, latanya@privacy.cs.cmu.edu wrote:
>I would very much like to inform the court that these abortion 
>records could be rendered sufficiently anonymous and then provided 
>in order to be shared without identifying the patients. I certainly 
>know how to achieve this scientifically.  Recommendations on how to 
>best contact the parties involved are welcomed.


but why should the hospitals comply?  who is paying them to do this 
anonymization? who would do the work?  if they're paper records, 
anonymization itself is highly complex and itself violative of 
patient privacy.

i think the best way for this to be done is for the justice 
department to put out an RFA and provide a grant for an academic 
researcher to perform these studies.  with IRB approval, of course.


jon merz
penn center for bioethics
merz@mail.med.upenn.edu