De-identification Software Licensed for caBIG – DE-ID(TM) to Advance Progress of Cancer Research Data-Sharing Grid
DE-ID Data Corp. announced today that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has licensed DE-ID(TM) software (DE-ID(TM)) to be used as a de-identification component of some of the software applications developed in the Tissue Banks and Pathology Workspace of the NCI-sponsored cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid(TM) (caBIG(TM)). The NCI will use DE-ID internally and sublicense the software to sixteen (16) NCI-designated Cancer Centers participating in caBIG(TM) across the United States as part of a program to advance the development of the caBIG network while considering longer term, strategic options. The NCI license is for one year with the option to renew.
“DE-ID plays a critical role in the development of multi-institution data sharing systems, serving as a HIPAA-compliance and security filter for personal health information in medical records and reports,” said Steven Merahn, MD, Chief Medical Officer, DE-ID Data Corp. “DE-ID saves time, reduces risk and increases productivity over manual de-identification or any pattern recognition or statistical software.”
DE-ID was developed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) where it is used as the de-identification standard for all clinical research approved by the UPMC Institutional Review Board (IRB). DE-ID does not simply eliminate any or all of the 18 HIPAA safe harbor patient identifiers, but maintains the research integrity and usability of the data through name proxies and date offsets within the de-identified file.
Hospitals, regional healthcare information organizations (RHIOs), data consortia and other healthcare institutions and networks can use DE-ID to enhance the power and usability of their data through sharing and aggregation; DE-ID gives IRBs a reliable tool to facilitate HIPAA compliance with clinical research and retrospective data analysis.
DE-ID can operate as a stand-alone program or be fully integrated into data grids and clinical information systems. For more information about DE-ID, please contact Dan Wasserstrom, President at [email]dan@de-id.com[/email] or by telephone at 215-500-2839, or visit the DE-ID Data Corp. website at http://www.de-id.com .
About DE-ID Data Corp.
DE-ID Data Corp. develops and provides technology-based solutions to patient privacy issues for data mining, clinical research, clinical trial recruitment.
About NCI’s caBIG(TM) Initiative
The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid(TM) (caBIG(TM)) is a collaborative effort led by the NCI to create an interoperable information infrastructure linking teams of cancer researchers together in a ‘World Wide Web’ of cancer research. To date, the capacity to harvest exciting opportunities resulting from rapid advances in cancer research — from causes to prevention, early detection and treatment — has been limited by the challenges that researchers face in their ability to share critical data and tools that support their work. By building caBIG together, members of the cancer research community solve a critical problem in ways that meet their individual needs, as well as the community’s collective needs.
caBIG(TM) participants from 50 NCI-designated Cancer Centers, other organizations and industry are constructing a common, standards-based environment along with tools and data sets that will make up the Grid. Additional partners from within the NCI and its grantees, other NIH institutes and interested federal health agencies, industry groups, and the broader biomedical research community in the near future are also envisioned. More details about caBIG can be found by visiting http://caBIG.nci.nih.gov .
