Prevalence of Sensitive Terms in Clinical Notes Using Natural Language Processing Techniques: Observational Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

With the increased sharing of electronic health information as required by the US 21st Century Cures Act, there is an increased risk of breaching patient, parent, or guardian confidentiality. The prevalence of sensitive terms in clinical notes is not known.

Objective

The aim of this study is to define sensitive terms that represent the documentation of content that may be private and determine the prevalence and characteristics of provider notes that contain sensitive terms.

Methods

Using keyword expansion, we defined a list of 781 sensitive terms. We searched all provider history and physical, progress, consult, and discharge summary notes for patients aged 0-21 years written between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019, for a direct string match of sens

SUBMITTER: Lee J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9233261 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature