Privacy-preserving Statistical Query and Processing on Distributed OpenEHR Data.

Unlabelled: Reuse of data from EHRs is essential for many purposes. The objective of the study was to explore how distributed electronic health record (EHR) data can be reused for privacy-preserving statistical query and processing.

Method: We have designed and created a proof of concept prototype solution based on the OpenEHR specification to ensure interoperability and to query the EHRs. XMPP was used for communication between the distributed processing components.

Results: We have created a two-phased process where a distributed virtual dataset is first created and thereafter processed using distributed privacy-preserving statistical queries.

Conclusion: Health authorities in Norway are currently defining the set of archetypes for the national interoperability program. This will create a common information schema enabling reuse of EHR data for statistical query and processing in a privacy-preserving manner. One benefit of the approach is that information transformation between information models for clinical use and statistical processing can be avoided.