Will Ross wrote: > > I'm looking for a tool to suppress sensitive information (e.g., HIV > status, etc.) from free text clinical notes prior to allowing the > notes to be published from a protected, physician-only area into > general circulation patient records for the clinic. What existing > FOSS solutions are available? >
As automation ... I think this is regarded everywhere as a hard problem. In the UK I believe it would be generally regarded as if not actually impossible, at least unfeasibly hard by a very large margin. As semi-automation, presenting line after line to a human, and offering hints I suppose there is scope. If HIV status is held as a code or information in a field, then this would just be a reporting problem, but one can't rely on it not being repeated in the free text, clinical info echoed back in lab results etc. Difficult. On the question of patients and confidentiality, the (Ross) Anderson Guidelines as published in the BMJ some years ago are probably good. -- A