Offering compelling practical and legal reasons why de-identification should be one of the main approaches to protecting patients' privacy, the Guide to the De-Identification of Personal Health Information outlines a proven, risk-based methodology for the de-identification of sensitive health information. It situates and contextualizes this risk-based methodology and provides a general overview of its steps. The book supplies a detailed case for why de-identification is important as well as best practices to help you pin point when it is necessary to apply de-identification in the disclosure of personal health information. It also: Outlines practical methods for de-identification Describes how to measure re-identification risk Explains how to reduce the risk of re-identification Includes proofs and supporting reference material Focuses only on transformations proven to work on health information--rather than covering all possible approaches, whether they work in practice or not Rated the top systems and software engineering scholar worldwide by The Journal of Systems and Software , Dr. El Emam is one of only a handful of individuals worldwide qualified to de-identify personal health information for secondary use under the HIPAA Privacy Rule Statistical Standard. In this book Dr. El Emam explains how we can make health data more accessible--while protecting patients' privacy and complying with current regulations.