Howdy all,

We need to share large datasets containing medical imagery without
revealing PHI. The images themselves don't present a problem due to their
nature but the embedded metadata does.

What approaches might work ?

Our first reaction was to encrypt problematic fields, embed a public key
for each item in the metadata, and have that dataset owner hold a separate
private key for each image that allows authorized users to decrypt fields.
Keys would be transmitted via the same secure channels that would normally
be used for for authorized PHI.

There's an obvious key management problem (any ideas for this -- central
store would counteract the benefits the keys offer), but I'm not sure if we
really have to worry about that. Significant key loss would be expected but
since that data disseminated is only a copy, a new dataset with new keys
could be created from the original if keys were lost or known to be
compromised.

This approach has a number of flaws, but we're thinking it may be a
practical way to achieve the effect needed without compromising private
data.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks,

kyle