Data Confidentiality: Health Policy Perspective

• Activity Number: 196
• Type: Roundtables
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 12:30 PM to 1:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Health Policy Statistics
• Author(s): Ofer Harel*+
• Companies: University of Connecticut
• Keywords: confidentiality ; privacy ; synthetic data

Abstract

There is increasing demand for access to economic, medical, educational, and human services data while at the same time growing concerns about confidentiality for the individuals whose information is being collected. Often times it is unethical to release private information to the public, and for certain medical and educational data, it is illegal. Currently, in many situations, researchers have to go through a lengthy process to gain access to such data and, even after being approved, are only granted access to limited data sets or data that have been perturbed in some way. Although this may protect individuals' privacy and confidentiality, it may severely limit the utility of the information. Somehow, a balance must be struck between the release of data for research purposes and the risk of disclosing private information. In this roundtable discussion we will discuss the conceptual, methodological and public policy implications of these issues and how these issues augment exciting challenges and provide open problems for our field.