Automatic de-identification of protected health information

Abstract

This paper presents an automatic de-identification system for Serbian, grounded on a rapid adaptation of the existing named entity recognition system. Based on a finite-state methodology and lexical resources, the system is designed to detect and replace all explicit personal protected health information present in the medical narrative texts, while still preserving all the relevant medical concepts. The results of a preliminary evaluation demonstrate the usefulness of this method both in preserving patient privacy and the de- identified document interoperability.