Mapping health data: Improved privacy protection with donut method geomasking

American Journal of Epidemiology

Volumn 172, Issue 9, 2010, Pages 1062-1069

  Hampton, Kristen H ^a   Fitch, Molly K ^b   Allshouse, William B ^c   Doherty, Irene A ^a   Gesink, Dionne C ^d   Leone, Peter A ^a,b,e   Serre, Marc L ^c   Miller, William C ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

^b IL   (United States)

^c University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

^e North Carolina Division of Public Health   (United States)

Author keywords

cluster analysis; confidentiality; demography; epidemiologic methods; population surveillance; public health practice

Indexed keywords

ADAPTIVE RADIATION; CLUSTER ANALYSIS; DATA SET; EPIDEMIOLOGY; HEALTH RISK; IDENTIFICATION METHOD; MAPPING METHOD; PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT; PUBLIC HEALTH; SPATIAL RESOLUTION;

ARTICLE; CLUSTER ANALYSIS; DATA ANALYSIS; EPIDEMIC; RISK ASSESSMENT; SIMULATION; TECHNIQUE;

CLUSTER ANALYSIS; CONFIDENTIALITY; DISEASE OUTBREAKS; EPIDEMIOLOGIC METHODS; GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS; HUMANS; NORTH CAROLINA; POPULATION SURVEILLANCE;

EID: 77958599554     PISSN: 00029262     EISSN: 14766256     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwq248     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Best N, Richardson S, Thomson A. A comparison of Bayesian spatial models for disease mapping. Stat Methods Med Res. 2005;14(1):35-59.
2. Leyland AH, Davies CA. Empirical Bayes methods for disease mapping. Stat Methods Med Res. 2005;14(1):17-34.
3. Wakefield J, Elliott P. Issues in the statistical analysis of small area health data. Stat Med. 1999;18(17-18):2377-2399.
4. Lawson AB. Statistical Methods in Spatial Epidemiology. Chichester, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd; 2001.
5. Thacker SB, Berkelman RL. History of public health surveillance. In: Halperin W, Baker EL Jr, Monson RR, eds. Public Health Surveillance. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Publishing; 1992:1-15.
6. Wakefield JC, Best NG, Waller L. Bayesian approaches to disease mapping. In: Elliott P, Wakefield J, Best N, et al, eds. Spatial Epidemiology: Methods and Applications. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press; 2000:104-127.
7. Kwan MP, Casas I, Schmitz BC. Protection of geoprivacy and accuracy of spatial information: how effective are geographical masks? Cartographica. 2004;39(2):15-28.
8. Olson KL, Grannis SJ, Mandl KD. Privacy protection versus cluster detection in spatial epidemiology. Am J Public Health. 2006;96(11):2002-2008.
9. Brownstein JS, Cassa CA, Mandl KD. No place to hide\-reverse identification of patients from published maps. N Engl J Med. 2006;355(16):1741-1742.
10. Stinchcomb D. Procedures for geomasking to protect patient confidentiality. Presented at the ESRI International Health GIS Conference, Washington, DC, October 17-20, 2004.
11. Boulos MN, Curtis AJ, AbdelMalik P. Musings on privacy issues in health research involving disaggregate geographic data about individuals [editorial]. Int J Health Geogr. 2009; 8:46. (doi:10.1186/1476-072X-8-46).
12. Armstrong MP, Rushton G, Zimmerman DL. Geographically masking health data to preserve confidentiality. Stat Med. 1999;18(5):497-525.
13. Cassa CA, Grannis SJ, Overhage JM, et al. A context-sensitive approach to anonymizing spatial surveillance data: impact on outbreak detection. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2006;13(2): 160-165.
14. Liao HH, Laymon P, Shull K. Automated process for accessing vital health information at census tract level. In: Williams RC, Howie MM, Lee CV, et al, eds. Proceedings of the Third National Conference on Geographic Information Systems in Public Health, San Diego, California, August 18-20, 1998.
15. Waller LA, Gotway CA. Applied Spatial Statistics for Public Health Data. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2004.
16. Rushton G, Mazumdar S. Preserving the privacy of health records while testing hypotheses of relationships between health outcomes and point-based sources of pollution. Proceedings of AutoCarto 2005, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 18-23, 2005.
17. Gruteser M, Grunwald D. Anonymous usage of location-based services through spatial and temporal cloaking. Proceedings of MobiSys 2003: The First International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, San Francisco, California, May 5-8, 2003.
18. Geographic Data Technology, ESRI. U.S. census block groups. In: ESRI Data & Maps. Redlands, CA: ESRI; 2004.
19. MathWorks, Inc. MaTLab, the language of technical computing, using MATLAB version 6.1. Natick, MA: The MathWorks, Inc; 2001.
20. Rothenberg RB. The geography of gonorrhea. Empirical demonstration of core group transmission. Am J Epidemiol. 1983;117(6):688-694.
21. Becker KM, Glass GE, Brathwaite W, et al. Geographic epidemiology of gonorrhea in Baltimore, Maryland, using a geographic information system. Am J Epidemiol. 1998;147(7):709-716.
22. Spruill NL. Measures of confidentiality. In: Proceedings of the Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association; 1982:260-265.
23. Kulldorff M. SaTScan v7.0: software for the spatial and space-time scan statistics. Silver Spring, MD: Information Management Services; 2006.
24. Kulldorff M. A spatial scan statistic. Commun Stat Theory Methods. 1997;26(6):1481-1496.
25. Wieland SC, Cassa CA, Mandl KD, et al. Revealing the spatial distribution of a disease while preserving privacy. Proc Natl Acad Sci \USA. 2008;105(46):17608-17613.