In the US, a new set of privacy regulation known as HIPAA, strongly
discourages the use of identifiers. For example, date of birth (DOB) is an
identifier. We "de-dentify" DOB by dropping it and using -age- instead,
after adding some random (algorithmically) generated noise to age. As one
might guess, there are times when we need the actual age or DOB for use in
a program.
One way to do this would be to provide the conversion algorithm in a
protected (encrypted) program. I wonder if there might be any way to
encrypt a file (do or ado) so that Stata could read it but no one else
could, kind of like a Stata internal program. I suspect the answer is no.
I'd welcome any suggestions. No comments on the imbecility of such
regulations, please, as such is already known/
Fred
Fred Wolfe
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases
Wichita, Kansas
Tel (316) 263-2125 Fax (316) 263-0761 [email protected]
