Utility-Aware Data Anonymization Model for Healthcare Information

Abstract

The use of collected data is a valuable source for analysis that benefits both medical research and practice. Information privacy is considered a significant challenge that hinders using such information for research purposes. In terms of research, releasing patients’ information for research purposes may lead to privacy breaches for patients in various cases. Individual patients may not wish to be identifiable when using information about their health for research. This work proposes a utility-aware data anonymization model for sharing patients’ health information for research purposes in a privacy-preserving manner. The proposed model is interactive and involves a number of operations that are performed on patients’ information before releasing it for research purposes according to certain requirements specified by the data user (researcher).