PLX Academy · News · 29 September 2022
Scientifics according to Nature Medicine have created a “digital mask,” which they say offers a pragmatic approach to safeguarding patient privacy in electronic health records and during virtual healthcare visits. Study released by the American Medical Association, showed more than 92% of patients believe privacy is a right and their health data should not be available for purchase. Nearly 75% of the 1,000 patients surveyed by Savvy Cooperative expressed concern about protecting the privacy of personal health data, and only 20% of patients said they knew the scope of companies and individuals with access to their data.
In research published in Nature Medicine, a team led by scientists from Cambridge and China for creating ’digital mask’ used three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction and deep learning algorithms to erase identifiable features from facial images while retaining disease-relevant features needed for diagnosis.
Facial images can be useful for identifying signs of disease. For example, features such as deep forehead wrinkles and wrinkles around the eyes are significantly associated with coronary heart disease, while abnormal changes in eye movement can indicate poor visual function and visual cognitive developmental problems. However, facial images also inevitably record other biometric information about the patient, including their race, sex, age and mood.
With the increasing digitalisation of medical records comes the risk of data breaches. While most patient data can be anonymised, facial data is more difficult to anonymise while retaining essential information. Common methods, including blurring and cropping identifiable areas, may lose important disease-relevant information, yet even so cannot fully evade face recognition systems.
Due to privacy concerns, people often hesitate to share their medical data for public medical research or electronic health records, hindering the development of digital medical care.