Perceived Risk of Re-Identification in OMOP-CDM Database: A Cross-Sectional Survey.

BACKGROUND: The advancement of information technology has immensely increased the quality and volume of health data. This has led to an increase in observational study, as well as to the threat of privacy invasion. Recently, a distributed research network based on the common data model (CDM) has emerged, enabling collaborative international medical research without sharing patient-level data. Although the CDM database for each institution is built inside a firewall, the risk of re-identification requires management. Hence, this study aims to elucidate the perceptions CDM users have towards CDM and risk management for re-identification. METHODS: The survey, targeted to answer specific in-depth questions on CDM, was conducted from October to November 2020. We targeted well-experienced researchers who actively use CDM. Basic statistics (total number and percent) were computed for all covariates. RESULTS: There were 33 valid respondents. Of these, 43.8% suggested additional anonymization was unnecessary beyond, "minimum cell count" policy, which obscures a cell with a value lower than certain number (usually 5) in shared results to minimize the liability of re-identification due to rare conditions. During extract-transform-load processes, 81.8% of respondents assumed structured data is under control from the risk of re-identification. However, respondents noted that date of birth and death were highly re-identifiable information. The majority of respondents (n = 22, 66.7%) conceded the possibility of identifier-contained unstructured data in the NOTE table. CONCLUSION: Overall, CDM users generally attributed high reliability for privacy protection to the intrinsic nature of CDM. There was little demand for additional de-identification methods. However, unstructured data in the CDM were suspected to have risks. The necessity for a coordinating consortium to define and manage the re-identification risk of CDM was urged.

Real-Time MFER Monitoring Using Interval-Saving of Health Signals.

This study proposes MFER design, an international standard for saving measured vital signs while simultaneously monitoring, for health care. The proposed method does not record vital signs as a single file, but rather, after setting header information on vital signs, it reads the measured signs in regular intervals, which are shown in a screen and saved along with header information. Shorter the interval of saving, more similar it becomes to real time monitoring. After measurement is complete, the file fragments are aggregated into a single file, including the header information. MFER constructed in this study in real time monitoring design shows that it can be efficiently used in monitoring and saving of vital signs for health care.

The MFER structure for coding medical signals in real time.

We present the structure of the MFER coder to store the medical signals in real time. The MFER is the rules to describe the file with tags the medical signal such as ECG, EEG, etc. However, because the MFER has the simple structure, and is stored as a file unit, it is difficult to process the signal with MFER rules in real-time. To do this, By storing the signal into small unit of time, it is possible to handle as if the signal is stored continuously. The structure of the presented MFER coder is verified in the results.

HIGH-RESOLUTION L(Y)SO DETECTORS USING PMT-QUADRANT-SHARING FOR HUMAN & ANIMAL PET CAMERAS.

We developed high resolution L(Y)SO detectors for human and animal PET applications using Photomultiplier-quadrant-sharing (PQS) technology. The crystal sizes were 1.27 × 1.27 × 10 mm(3) for the animal PQS-blocks and 3.25 × 3.25 × 20 mm(3) for human ones. Polymer mirror film patterns (PMR) were placed between crystals as reflector. The blocks were assembled together using optical grease and wrapped by Teflon tape. The blocks were coupled to regular round PMT's of 19/51 mm in PQS configuration. List-mode data of Ga-68 source (511 KeV) were acquired with our high yield pileup-event recovery (HYPER) electronics and data acquisition software. The high voltage bias was 1100V. Crystal decoding maps and individual crystal energy resolutions were extracted from the data. To investigate the potential imaging resolution of the PET cameras with these blocks, we used GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission) simulation package. GATE is a GEANT4 based software toolkit for realistic simulation of PET and SPECT systems. The packing fractions of these blocks were found to be 95.6% and 98.2%. From the decoding maps, all 196 and 225 crystals were clearly identified. The average energy resolutions were 14.0% and 15.6%. For small animal PET systems, the detector ring diameter was 16.5 cm with an axial field of view (AFOV) of 11.8 cm. The simulation data suggests that a reconstructed radial (tangential) spatial resolution of 1.24 (1.25) mm near the center is potentially achievable. For the wholebody human PET systems, the detector ring diameter was 86 cm. The simulation data suggests that a reconstructed radial (tangential) spatial resolution of 3.09(3.38) mm near the center is potentially achievable. From this study we can conclude that PQS design could achieve high spatial resolutions and excellent energy resolutions on human and animal PET systems with substantially lower production costs and inexpensive readout devices.