New agreement uses big data to improve WA health care

The Curtin Centre for Data Linkage has developed a new and innovative way of connecting data across general practices, hospitals, registries and government departments, which significantly reduces privacy risks. The increased level of security is because the linkage techniques operate on encrypted data, which means there is no requirement for the release of information that could potentially identify an individual. Under a new Memorandum of Understanding, the Curtin Centre for Data Linkage will work with the Department of Health to link GP, hospital, pathology and non-health data records with analytical tools to support the individual-centred research and service evaluation necessary to improve health outcomes at both a state and national level. Professor Gavin Pereira, from the Curtin Health Research and Data Analytics Hub at Curtin University, said the new privacy-preserving record linkage methods had the potential to provide new individual-level data for research discovery and to inform government services, policies and programs. "We will be able to study a person's interactions with the health system and overlay big data analytics with the ultimate aim of new research discoveries," Professor Pereira said. "The linkage of big data has traditionally relied on matching personally identifiable information. Although this improves the ability to investigate individual health outcomes and provide personalised health care, there remains concern regarding privacy as the matching requires the exchange of identifiable information.