Privacy concerns are often cited as one of the barriers to sharing data. One solution to enable data sharing while preserving privacy is to anonymize (or de-identify) the data. However, the interpretation and implementation of anonymization varies across jurisdictions. Canada exemplifies the complexity of privacy regulatory governance with interprovincial differences, such as differences in the definition of anonymized information. Such inconsistencies can significantly impact the adoption of anonymization.
On February 11, Dr. Lisa Pilgram and Dr. Khaled El Emam will present a study undertaken by our lab to better understand the perspectives of privacy regulators on anonymization practices and identify challenges to adopting anonymization. The study consisted of qualitative interviews with 93% of the privacy regulators in Canada. We found multiple areas in which their views closely aligned and some areas where heterogeneity was observed. Lisa will present their perspectives and our recommendations to help reduce uncertainty around anonymization and create incentives for using privacy-enhancing technologies.
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Speaker Bios
Dr. Lisa Pilgram is a clinician scientist and currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at EHIL. Her research interests involve sharing of healthcare-related data, with a particular focus in privacy-enhancing technologies. She has previously worked on anonymization (de-identification) and is now exploring the potential of synthetic data in this field. Lisa’s clinical expertise lies in internal medicine - nephrology.
Dr. Khaled El Emam is the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Medical AI at the University of Ottawa, where he is a Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health. He is also a Senior Scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, and Scholar-in-Residence at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC). Khaled has founded or co-founded six product and services companies involved with data management and data analytics, with some having successful exits. Prior to his academic roles, he was a Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada. He also served as the head of the Quantitative Methods Group at the Fraunhofer Institute in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He has a PhD from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, King’s College, at the University of London, England.