A detailed guidance manual on de – identification
methods to be adopted for PHI content in Hospital
records and information systems management is given by
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (Bradley
Malin, 2010). The process of de-identification (refer
figure 1), by which identifiers are removed from the
health information, mitigates privacy risks to individuals
and thereby supports the secondary use of data for
comparative effectiveness studies, policy assessment,