An empirical assessment of differential privacy in real-world observational data: a case-control study of asthma exacerbation in UK Biobank linked with electronic health records.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Electronic health records (EHRs) provide substantial resources for observational studies, yet present significant challenges in safeguarding patient privacy while maintaining research quality. Differential privacy (DP) offers a quantifiable privacy guarantee; however, its impact on observational studies remains underexplored. We empirically evaluated the effects of DP across varying values of its privacy parameter, epsilon, on case-control analysis outcomes using EHR data. This study aims to inform DP parameter selection and examines the influence of study characteristics on differentially private observational studies.

Materials and methods

We assessed the effects of DP on a case-control study of 1-year asthma exacerbations, including 22 165 participants with a h

SUBMITTER: Mizani MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12277706 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature