The American Medical Informatics Association has a journal and regular
conference proceedings where they talk about this kind of thing. They must
have the same problem. Why not check out how that community of practice
handles it?
cheers
stuart
--
...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Wed, 10 Apr 2024 at 04:51, EDWIN VINCENT SPERR <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Greetings!
>
> I have a question for the collective, especially for those knowledgeable
about patron privacy issues.
>
> I would like to know more about the search behavior of users of a Large
Public Medical Database. The admins are loath to share any search logs from
this resource as they are (rightly!) concerned about protecting user
privacy. This leaves investigators (like me) unable to use this data to do
things like, to use a completely random example, figure out how often
end-users are using abbreviations instead of spelling out a medical term in
their search. I'm wondering if it's possible to demonstrate to the
proprietors that it would be possible to share at least some of this
information with me in a safe way.
>
> I understand that sharing a full log entry that includes such
identifiable info as an IP address or userid is obviously a Bad Idea in
terms of privacy. My question is whether there is a model of sharing
search info with outsiders that's far enough to the *other* end of the
spectrum as to presumptively be okay? What if one only shared bare searches
and timestamps without being tying them to any information about the
searcher? Would it help if you discarded the timestamps, and instead
shared just a dump of all the search strings that were received between two
dates? If *that* was also deemed to be too risky, would it matter if you
were sharing instead a random sample of those searches?
>
> Any pointers for getting started on this question would be greatly
appreciated!
>
>
> Edwin V. Sperr, MLIS
> Clinical Information Librarian
> AU/UGA Medical Partnership
> Office of Graduate Medical Education
>
> St. Mary's Hospital
> 1230 Baxter Street
> Athens, GA 30606
>
> (706) 389-3864
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