TY - JOUR
T1 - Protecting the privacy of individual general practice patient electronic records for geospatial epidemiology research
AU - MAZUMDAR, Soumya
AU - Konings, Paul
AU - Bagheri, Nasser
AU - McRae, Ian
AU - Fante, Peter
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Public Health Association of Australia.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - General practitioner (GP) practices in Australia are increasingly storing patient information in electronic databases. These practice databases can be accessed by clinical audit software to generate reports that inform clinical or population health decision making and public health surveillance. Many audit software applications also have the capacity to generate de-identified patient unit record data. However, the de-identified nature of the extracted data means that these records often lack geographic information. Without spatial references, it is impossible to build maps reflecting the spatial distribution of patients with particular conditions and needs. Links to socioeconomic, demographic, environmental or other geographically based information are also not possible. In some cases, relatively coarse geographies such as postcode are available, but these are of limited use and researchers cannot undertake precision spatial analyses such as calculating travel times
AB - General practitioner (GP) practices in Australia are increasingly storing patient information in electronic databases. These practice databases can be accessed by clinical audit software to generate reports that inform clinical or population health decision making and public health surveillance. Many audit software applications also have the capacity to generate de-identified patient unit record data. However, the de-identified nature of the extracted data means that these records often lack geographic information. Without spatial references, it is impossible to build maps reflecting the spatial distribution of patients with particular conditions and needs. Links to socioeconomic, demographic, environmental or other geographically based information are also not possible. In some cases, relatively coarse geographies such as postcode are available, but these are of limited use and researchers cannot undertake precision spatial analyses such as calculating travel times
KW - reflecting the spatial distribution of patients with particular conditions and needs
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84913610574&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1753-6405.12262
DO - 10.1111/1753-6405.12262
M3 - Article
SN - 1326-0200
VL - 38
SP - 548
EP - 552
JO - Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
JF - Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
IS - 6
ER -