3d International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Research Article

Privacy enforcement for distributed healthcare queries

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.PERVASIVEHEALTH2009.6016,
        author={Michael Siegenthaler and Ken Birman},
        title={Privacy enforcement for distributed healthcare queries},
        proceedings={3d International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare},
        proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH},
        year={2009},
        month={8},
        keywords={Computer science Costs Data privacy Data security Databases Drugs History Medical services Protection Testing},
        doi={10.4108/ICST.PERVASIVEHEALTH2009.6016}
    }
    
  • Michael Siegenthaler
    Ken Birman
    Year: 2009
    Privacy enforcement for distributed healthcare queries
    PERVASIVEHEALTH
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/ICST.PERVASIVEHEALTH2009.6016
Michael Siegenthaler1,*, Ken Birman1,*
  • 1: Dept. of Computer Science, Cornell University
*Contact email: msiegen@cs.cornell.edu, ken@cs.cornell.edu

Abstract

In the healthcare industry and others, sensitive private information must be stored and shared between various organizations in the course of running their business. We have developed an architecture in which distributed data can be queried as if it resided in a single centralized database, while revealing minimal information beyond the answer to the query. In this paper we review the architecture and show how queries can be filtered to enforce user-specified privacy policies.We present a system for tracking information flow that is flexible enough to permit revealing sensitive data to those who have a need to know, while limiting the amount of useful information that can be obtained by a less-than-honest participant.