Privacy and Innovation in Healthcare Information

"Information technology is the foundation for great research and development.  We need technology to make the core discoveries that will ultimately protect us and save lives in the future." - Dr. Khaled El-Emam

Dr. Khaled El-Emam has been passionate about technology since he was a child. He came to Canada from Germany to work at the Canadian National Research Council in 1999 after obtaining a Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, King's College at the University of London (UK).

Today, Khaled is an award-winning systems and software engineering scholar and a Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the University of Ottawa. He works in a lab at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute, leading a world-class e-health research program using Microsoft technology.

In his lab at CHEO, Khaled developed Privacy Analytics, software that helps health care providers protect personal information while unlocking data that is valuable for physicians, pharmacists, researchers, and ultimately, the patient. Home addresses, family histories and occupations are concealed by Privacy Analytics, while trends are uncovered in analysis that can help lead to important discoveries such as the real-time identification of influenza outbreaks.

"Privacy Analytics is a great example of cutting-edge innovation that has a measurable human impact," said John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada. "This type of research and development is already a priority south of the border, and it's great to see that Canada is also advancing in this area."

Balancing the privacy rights of patients with the need for information on the part of public health professionals, researchers, and governments  is a contentious issue because medical histories are the most sensitive examples of personal data.

"It only takes one breach of someone's private health information before you start losing the public's trust," Khaled explains. "This can have disastrous effects on access to information, which the health care industry needs in order to innovate and find cures to protect us against life-threatening diseases and the next generation of epidemics, including bioterrorism."

Microsoft Canada is proud to honour Khaled through its Canadian Innovation Program, where Canadian men and women are using our technology to create breakthroughs that benefit everyone. To learn more about Khaled's innovations on the Microsoft platform, visit http://www.privacyanalytics.ca/

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