Statistical biases due to anonymization evaluated in an open clinical dataset from COVID-19 patients

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

  • NAPKON Study Group - (Autor:in)
  • Universitätsklinikum Köln
  • Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  • Universitätsklinikum Würzburg
  • Universitätsklinikum Ostwestfalen-Lippe (OWL)
  • Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein Campus Kiel
  • Klinikum der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München
  • Klinikum Rechts der Isar (MRI TUM)
  • Universitätsklinikum Frankfurt
  • Universitätsklinikum Regensburg
  • Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
  • Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Abstract

Anonymization has the potential to foster the sharing of medical data. State-of-the-art methods use mathematical models to modify data to reduce privacy risks. However, the degree of protection must be balanced against the impact on statistical properties. We studied an extreme case of this trade-off: the statistical validity of an open medical dataset based on the German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON), which was prepared for publication using a strong anonymization procedure. Descriptive statistics and results of regression analyses were compared before and after anonymization of multiple variants of the original dataset. Despite significant differences in value distributions, the statistical bias was found to be small in all cases. In the regression analyses, the median absolute deviations of the estimated adjusted odds ratios for different sample sizes ranged from 0.01 [minimum = 0, maximum = 0.58] to 0.52 [minimum = 0.25, maximum = 0.91]. Disproportionate impact on the statistical properties of data is a common argument against the use of anonymization. Our analysis demonstrates that anonymization can actually preserve validity of statistical results in relatively low-dimensional data.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer776
Seiten (von - bis)1-15
Seitenumfang15
FachzeitschriftScientific data
Jahrgang9
Ausgabenummer1
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 21 Dez. 2022
Peer-Review-StatusJa
Extern publiziertJa

Externe IDs

PubMedCentral PMC9769467
Scopus 85144597072

Schlagworte

Schlagwörter

  • Humans, Bias, COVID-19, Data Anonymization, Models, Theoretical, Privacy, Data Interpretation, Statistical, Datasets as Topic

Bibliotheksschlagworte