A Case Study of the Secure Anonymous Information Linkage (SAIL) Gateway: a Privacy-protecting Remote Access System for Health-related Research and Evaluation

Overview

Journal J Biomed Inform

Publisher Elsevier

Specialty Medical Informatics

Date 2014 Jan 21

PMID 24440148

Citations 111

Authors

Kerina H Jones

David V Ford

Chris Jones

Rohan Dsilva

Simon Thompson

Caroline J Brooks

Martin L Heaven

Daniel S Thayer

Cynthia L McNerney

Ronan A Lyons

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

With the current expansion of data linkage research, the challenge is to find the balance between preserving the privacy of person-level data whilst making these data accessible for use to their full potential. We describe a privacy-protecting safe haven and secure remote access system, referred to as the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Gateway. The Gateway provides data users with a familiar Windows interface and their usual toolsets to access approved anonymously-linked datasets for research and evaluation. We outline the principles and operating model of the Gateway, the features provided to users within the secure environment, and how we are approaching the challenges of making data safely accessible to increasing numbers of research users. The Gateway represents a powerful analytical environment and has been designed to be scalable and adaptable to meet the needs of the rapidly growing data linkage community.

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