Importance of Patient Privacy in Healthcare Analytics Research

Abstract

In recent years, ensuring patient privacy has become an important part of the healthcare and medical research. With the vast amount of healthcare data available for research and the increasing ability to link and combine multiple healthcare datasets to enhance understanding of patient diagnostic and treatment journey, the need for the assessment of analytical datasets and output from the patient privacy side has become yet another step of the study protocol. The types of methods applied in the evaluation vary and include internal evaluation of sensitive personal and healthcare information through a statistical expert determination of the combined dataset. Collaborating with a third-party expert in the privacy area can help ensure an objective assessment of meeting patient privacy requirements. As a result of the importance of patient privacy in healthcare research, this chapter will review the variety of methods leveraged in ensuring patient privacy protection during the healthcare analytics and research journey.