De-identified Health Data Correlation for Privacy-Safe Ad Targeting
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems face challenges in securely combining health condition information with consumer demographic data while ensuring individual privacy, particularly in geographical mapping and online advertising effectiveness measurement, due to regulatory requirements like HIPAA.
Innovation Solution
A system that de-identifies consumer data using unique keys and tokens, correlates them with healthcare data without direct access, and transmits obscured health expressions to maintain privacy, allowing for targeted geographic messaging and advertising campaign analysis without revealing personal health information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If health condition information is combined with consumer demographic data for targeted advertising, then advertising effectiveness is improved, but individual privacy is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary system that acts as a mediator between health data providers and advertising systems. This intermediary de-identifies health data by removing direct identifiers and uses statistical methods to preserve privacy while maintaining the utility of the data for targeted advertising. The system correlates de-identified health data with demographic data through geographic areas rather than direct individual matching, thus enabling advertising effectiveness while protecting individual privacy.
2Measurement precision
If direct correlation between consumer data and healthcare data is established, then data accuracy is improved, but regulatory compliance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the data correlation process into multiple stages: first de-identifying health data by removing direct identifiers, then correlating with demographic data at the geographic area level rather than individual level. This segmentation allows the system to maintain data accuracy for advertising purposes while ensuring compliance with HIPAA regulations by never establishing direct correlation between identifiable consumer data and healthcare data.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If de-identification methods are applied to health data, then privacy protection is improved, but data utility deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameters of data correlation from individual-level identifiers to geographic area-level aggregations. By transforming the data from individual records to geographic area statistics, the system maintains privacy protection while preserving data utility for targeted advertising. The de-identified health data retains sufficient information to determine prevalence of health conditions in geographic areas, which is adequate for advertising targeting without revealing individual identities.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer system and method causes selection of an advertisement based on the prevalence of a healthcare condition in each of a plurality of geographic areas. The prevalence is calculated by an entity that matches healthcare data with consumer data to determine, in each of the geographic areas, how many individuals have an unidentified healthcare condition. The entity removes information pertaining to specific geographic areas and healthcare condition codes that would permit re-identification of persons coded with those specific codes, so that the privacy of the personal healthcare information is maintained.