The New Progress and Methods of Privacy Protection on Medical and Health Big Data*

In recent years, due to the emergence of COVID-19(Corona Virus Disease 2019), how to have a higher quality medical environment has become a troubling problem. The proposal of the Office of the State Council on promoting the development of 'Internet plus medical and health' has brought a lot of convenience to the public, but also brought about the problem of data leakage and other user privacy protection. In view of the problems of user's personal information storage and user's health data processing in the medical and health context, how to ensure that these data are not stolen, leaked or tampered with has become a major challenge faced by current researchers. Based on the privacy protection of users in the context of health care, this paper classifies the current privacy protection mechanisms, and introduces the latest progress of related technologies. Finally, according to the integrated information, the research direction of privacy protection technologies in the field of health care is prospected. © 2022 IEEE.

Covid-19 Information Protection: Between Information Privacy, Health Secrecy and Public Safety

To contribute meaningfully to the fight against disease outbreaks, the media should not just funnel predetermined health news to the audience. It should also play the vital role of convincing citizens to protect themselves and to shun rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories that disfigure reality about infectious diseases. The present study examines alleged Covid-19 information concealment in Nigeria, which is thought to account for citizen uncooperativeness in the fight against the disease. It highlights the distinctions between data privacy and information secrecy. Using Spearman's rank correlation, Chi-square and linear regression, we analyzed data from 183 statistically selected respondents from two states and the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria. Data were also generated from qualitative survey of 12 health editors, two public affairs analysts and two government officials. Results indicate negative relationships between compliance with Covid-19 containment measures, citizen opinions on Covid-19 information protection and opinions on Covid-19 controversies. Data from qualitative survey suggest that government's protection of information forces editors to report stories without "human face.” The study highlights the need for distinctions between physical privacy, information privacy and related concepts in the enforcement of health information privacy. This is to avoid sacrificing the public's right to know in the guise of health information protection. © 2023 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

How Attacker Knowledge Affects Privacy Risks: An Analysis Using Probabilistic Programming

Governments and businesses routinely disclose large amounts of private data on individuals, for data analytics. However, despite attempts by data controllers to anonymise data, attackers frequently deanonymise disclosed data by matching it with their prior knowledge. When is a chosen anonymisation method adequate? For this, a data controller must consider attackers befitting their scenario;how does attacker knowledge affect disclosure risk? We present a multi-dimensional conceptual framework for assessing privacy risks given prior knowledge about data. The framework defines three dimensions: distinctness (of input records), informedness (of attacker), and granularity (of anonymisation program output). We model three well-known types of disclosure risk: identity disclosure, attribute disclosure, and quantitative attribute disclosure. We demonstrate how to apply this framework in a health record privacy scenario: We analyse how informing the attacker with COVID-19 infection rates affects privacy risks. We perform this analysis using Privug, a method that uses probabilistic programming to do standard statistical analysis with Bayesian Inference. © 2022 ACM.

Consumer Views on Health Applications of Consumer Digital Data and Health Privacy Among US Adults: Qualitative Interview Study.

BACKGROUND: In 2020, the number of internet users surpassed 4.6 billion. Individuals who create and share digital data can leave a trail of information about their habits and preferences that collectively generate a digital footprint. Studies have shown that digital footprints can reveal important information regarding an individual's health status, ranging from diet and exercise to depression. Uses of digital applications have accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic where public health organizations have utilized technology to reduce the burden of transmission, ultimately leading to policy discussions about digital health privacy. Though US consumers report feeling concerned about the way their personal data is used, they continue to use digital technologies. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to understand the extent to which consumers recognize possible health applications of their digital data and identify their most salient concerns around digital health privacy. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews with a diverse national sample of US adults from November 2018 to January 2019. Participants were recruited from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a nationally representative panel. Participants were asked to reflect on their own use of digital technology, rate various sources of digital information, and consider several hypothetical scenarios with varying sources and health-related applications of personal digital information. RESULTS: The final cohort included a diverse national sample of 45 US consumers. Participants were generally unaware what consumer digital data might reveal about their health. They also revealed limited knowledge of current data collection and aggregation practices. When responding to specific scenarios with health-related applications of data, they had difficulty weighing the benefits and harms but expressed a desire for privacy protection. They saw benefits in using digital data to improve health, but wanted limits to health programs' use of consumer digital data. CONCLUSIONS: Current privacy restrictions on health-related data are premised on the notion that these data are derived only from medical encounters. Given that an increasing amount of health-related data is derived from digital footprints in consumer settings, our findings suggest the need for greater transparency of data collection and uses, and broader health privacy protections.

Balancing health privacy, health information exchange, and research in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 infection poses serious challenges to the healthcare system that are being addressed through the creation of new unique and advanced systems of care with disjointed care processes (eg, telehealth screening, drive-through specimen collection, remote testing, telehealth management). However, our current regulations on the flows of information for clinical care and research are antiquated and often conflict at the state and federal levels. We discuss proposed changes to privacy regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act designed to let health information seamlessly and frictionlessly flow among the health entities that need to collaborate on treatment of patients and, also, allow it to flow to researchers trying to understand how to limit its impacts.