Health information custodians frequently rely on de-identification when using or disclosing health information – a measure that can protect individual privacy, but often at the expense of data quality (zero-sum paradigm). Dr. Khaled El Emam, a senior investigator at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (CHEO), has resolved this dilemma through the development of a tool that de-identifies personal health information in a manner that simultaneously minimizes both the risk of re-identification and the degree of distortion to the original database (positive-sum paradigm). March 2010
