Updated: Sun Nov. 16 2008 6:28:53 PM
ctvottawa.ca

Our medical records, once stacked high inside a doctor's office, are being increasingly digitized. That means anxiety about privacy and potential security breaches.

A new Ottawa firm believes they have the answer to keep information safe while allowing some e-health files to be shared with those who have a legitimate interest.

Privacy Analytics was founded nearly four years ago by Khaled El Emam, a University of Ottawa professor and Canada Research Chair specializing in electronic health information.

El Amam wanted to develop a system that would remove identifying information from a medical file, thus allowing access to researchers.

"Government agencies want the data, and medical researchers, and companies, and other hospitals," he said. "A lot of good things can come out of analyzing this data."

So El Emam partnered with CHEO's pharmacy department in a program to gather all the information the hospital needs and and then remove data based on the level of protection an outside agency can offer.

The system tracks drug and treatment data plus personal information. Such facts were never shared in the past. But the digital age as created opportunities to share data and improve treatment.

The project allowed CHEO to expand its capabilities, said Susan Blanchard, a pharmacy technician who provided the user's perspective.

Privacy Analytics' potential market is huge: hospitals, doctor's offices, and the large databases that track cancer and other illnesses. Our medical data increasingly resides on harddrives and servers, and 10 per cent of Canadian doctors are automated.

El Emam believes he is the first in the marketplace with this technology; he and his backers are ready to move from developing stages to the market.

But the big question is whether privacy can be maintained. If not, the shift to e-health may be in jeopardy.

"A good example is in Britain where they have had basically a rebellion because they did not look at privacy issues before they began creating e-health records, unlike here where there is a strong effort to meet the demands of privacy," El Emam said.

"And you really need to address the privacy so that doctors and the public will buy in."

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Paul Brent