Chaînage de bases de données anonymisées pour les études épidémiologiques multicentriques nationales et internationales : proposition d'un algorithme cryptographique

Background: Compiling individual records coming from different sources is very important for multicenter epidemiological studies; however, European directives and other national legislation concerning nominal data processing must be respected. These legal aspects can be satisfied by implementing mechanisms that allow anonymization of patient data (such as hashing techniques). Moreover, for security reasons, official recommendations suggest using different cryptographic keys in combination with a cryptographic hash function for each study. Unfortunately, this type of anonymization procedure is in contradiction with common requirements in public health and biomedical research because it becom…