Protecting count queries in study design

Staal Amund Vinterbo, Anand D. Sarwate, Aziz A. Boxwala

Abstract: Objective Today's clinical research institutions provide tools for researchers to query their data warehouses for counts of patients. To protect patient privacy, counts are perturbed before reporting; this compromises their utility for increased privacy. The goal of this study is to extend current query answer systems to guarantee a quantifiable level of privacy and allow users to tailor perturbations to maximize the usefulness according to their needs.