De-identified Healthcare Data Evaluation System
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Solution Overview
Problem
Federal privacy laws, such as HIPAA, complicate the process for healthcare facilities to obtain pre or post-encounter medical information from outpatient settings, making it difficult for them to assess and improve inpatient care, leading to potential suboptimal care and increased readmissions.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that de-identifies patient identities from healthcare encounters by generating and comparing encrypted request tokens with tokens associated with medical information, allowing for the reporting of pre or post-encounter characteristics without revealing individual identities, thus enabling healthcare facilities to access aggregated medical data from pharmacies and other providers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If healthcare facilities obtain pre or post-encounter medical information from outpatient settings, then they can better assess and improve inpatient care and reduce readmissions, but federal privacy laws make the process cumbersome and expensive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a de-identification intermediary system that sits between healthcare facilities and outpatient medical information sources. This intermediary automatically removes personally identifiable information (PII) from medical records while preserving clinically relevant data, enabling care quality assessment without manual privacy review processes. The system acts as a mediator that reconciles the need for data access with privacy protection requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs de-identification of medical information in advance, before the data is accessed by healthcare facilities. By pre-processing the data to remove PII while maintaining clinical utility, the system eliminates the need for time-consuming manual privacy reviews and approvals, making the data access process efficient and scalable.
2Loss of information
If healthcare facilities access aggregated medical data from multiple providers, then they can identify trends in healthcare utilization and improve care processes, but federal privacy laws restrict the dissemination of protected health information
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and removes personally identifiable information from medical records while retaining the clinical and utilization data needed for trend analysis. By separating PII from clinically relevant information, the system enables aggregated data access for care process improvement while automatically complying with privacy law restrictions on PHI dissemination.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transforms protected health information into de-identified data by changing the parameters of the data structure - removing identifiers while preserving clinical variables, diagnosis codes, procedure codes, and utilization patterns. This parameter transformation allows the data to be used for trend analysis without violating privacy restrictions.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If manual processes are used to obtain de-identified data compliant with privacy laws, then patient privacy is protected, but the process adds considerable expense and time to operations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual mechanical processes of data de-identification and privacy review with an automated computational system. The automated de-identification engine uses algorithms to systematically remove PII and validate compliance, eliminating the need for manual review by privacy officers and reducing both time and expense while maintaining privacy protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs self-service de-identification by automatically processing medical records through its de-identification engine, which autonomously removes PII, validates compliance with privacy laws, and makes the data ready for analysis. This self-service capability eliminates the need for external privacy review processes and accelerates data access.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-implemented method includes producing medical information that characterizes a group of individuals from a set of private data representing pre or post-encounter characteristics of the individuals, wherein the individuals have had encounters with a healthcare facility. The identity of the individuals is unattainable from the produced medical information. The method also includes providing the produced medical information to report the pre or post-encounter characteristics of the group.