Health practitioners and researchers understand that greater knowledge is needed to help chronic disease surveillance, research for primary care and practice quality improvement. This can only be accomplished through increased data sharing and access to patient information over multiple care systems. But how do we protect patient privacy?
The Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) understood that health practitioners and researchers need useful, detailed health information in order to help improve treatment and care. In order to develop a multi-disease electronic record surveillance system that would
allow for research and analytics, CPCSSN needed a proven methodology to de-identify health information in order to protect patient privacy. Through
securely de-identifying patient data from practices and care centers across Canada, researchers and healthcare practitioners are able to conduct chronic disease surveillance, research for primary care and practice quality improvement.
