Privacy
Protecting Your Identity
Safeguarding the identity of the individual should be an integral part of the data linkage process. While data linkage aims to utilise all the available routinely-collected data, it is equally important to ensure that any identifying information is protected.
We have built data linkage capabilities that are based on the model used in Western Australia. In this system, no one party holds all the available information. This delineation of roles precludes the sharing of identifying information, thus maintaining the individual’s privacy and confidentiality.
Step1:
Each custodian sends a file with ONLY the identifying information to the linkage team:
Step2:
The linkage team links the two files and attaches a project key. They return the identifying information along with the project key to the relevant data custodian. The linkage team does not have access to the health service data for each individual.
Step3:
Each custodian merges the project key with the health services data and sends only the health services data with the project key to the researcher. The identifying information is not provided to the researcher.
Step4:
The researcher merges the 2 datasets together using the project key. The researcher thus has access to all the de-identified health data without violating the privacy and security of the individual.
