Need for a good Data Anonymisation Tool

Development
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Hi developers @michael @wyclif @dkayiwa @pascal ,

Have been given a task to anonymise an OpenMRS database and I have not done such a task before I wish you help in proposing some good Data Anonymisation tools

Thanks.

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This wiki page is a bit out of date, but it might be a good start: https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/docs/Anonymizing+Data

Can you describe the use case in more detail?

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Also see this thread:

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@pascal Thanks for the link to the wiki page !!!

Sorry ,but I dont understand your question about the use case. Please i wish you throw more lights on that Thanks

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What is the reason you are trying to anonymize the data?

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@pascal I dont know the actual reason!! But I just got an Internship and luckily I had to work on OpenMRS that I like much and my next task is to do a local anonymisation of the database after i succeeded with a local upgrade !!!

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Dou you know at least what the user expects you to do? For instance: hide all patient names and adresses.

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@lluismf Yeah, From what he explained and the research i did he needs me to do sort of de-identificatiion

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If you just need to hide the names on the web app, you should be able to do this just using settings in the properties file (see first link I posted). However, if you need to dump the database and send it to someone, you’ll need to do something more complicated.

My suggestion would be to first work on defining the use case. Once we have that defined, then we can suggest the correct approach.

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@pascal Thanks for the ideas. Will work on the use cases as you suggested before getting back to you Thanks

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@pascal, Not yet , I have some doubts, is the effect of editing the openmrs-runtime.properties file reversible ? During the editing should the values for given_name, middle_name and familly name be John, P. , Smith respectively just as what I am seeing here https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/docs/Anonymizing+Data ?

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Have you tried editing the openmrs-runtime.properties file as described in the first section of this page?

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@pascal, Not yet , I have some doubts, is the effect of editing the openmrs-runtime.properties file reversible ? During the editing should the values for given_name, middle_name and familly name be John, P. , Smith respectively just as what I am seeing here https://wiki.openmrs.org/display/docs/Anonymizing+Data ? Or is that I have to do the editing for each Individual in the database ?

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Yes. Values in the database are not actually changed, they are just not displayed on the interface.

The values can be whatever you want to be displayed on the interface.

For each running instance of OpenMRS that you want to anonymize, you will have to edit the runtime properties file for that instance.

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@pascal, Thanks for the immediate reply.

My next question is to know if i have to write

obscure_patients=false
obscure_patients.given_name=John
obscure_patients.middle_name=P.
obscure_patients.family_name=Smith

manually in the Openmrs-runtime.properties file for as many as patient names i have in the db ?

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No, only once. The values (e.g “John”) are what will be displayed on the user interface for every patient.

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@pascal, Thanks for the clarifications. Will revert to you later !!!

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