A new PCA-based utility measure for synthetic data evaluation

Data synthesis is a privacy enhancing technology aiming to produce realistic and timely data when real data is hard to obtain. Utility of synthetic data generators (SDGs) has been investigated through different utility metrics. These metrics have been found to generate conflicting conclusions making direct comparison of SDGs surprisingly difficult. Moreover, prior research found no correlation between popular metrics, concluding they tackle different utility-dimensions. This paper aggregates four popular utility metrics (representing different utility dimensions) into one using principal-component-analysis and checks whether the new measure can generate synthetic data that perform well in real-life. The new measure is used to compare four well-recognized SDGs.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 8 tables, 1 appendi

Attitudes and practices on antibiotic use and its emerging threats among Lebanese dairy veterinarians: a case study from a developing country

IntroductionThis study aimed to explore how veterinarians (vets) rationalized their prescribing decisions for antimicrobial (AM) uses, the barriers they perceived to implement proper farm management in Lebanon, and the consecutive threats that might arise concerning the emergent spread of antimicrobial resistance in animals and the population.MethodsAmid the COVID-19 pandemic, phone call interviews were conducted with 34 veterinarians working in different demographic regions across the country. Data were analyzed qualitatively using an inductive thematic analysis.Results and discussionThe majority of veterinarians called for responsible antibiotic use. The prescribing decision of veterinarians was based mainly on suspected disease from field examination, farmer’s reports via phone calls, and the ability of the farmer to cover antibiotic costs. Very few veterinarians referred to laboratory diagnosis before prescribing a specific AM due to many obstacles. This study uncovered the absence of a trust relationship between veterinarians and farmers in Lebanon. Veterinarians provided different insights into farming practices, reflecting that farmers, in general, lack proper knowledge and implementation of farm management and that they mainly treat the herd on their own, especially in light of the current unprecedented economic crisis that Lebanon has been facing in the last three years. Above all, veterinarians revealed that AM resistance in Lebanon is markedly spreading, which calls for a serious and instantaneous set of governmental policies and regulations

A Protocol for the Secure Linking of Registries for HPV Surveillance

In order to monitor the effectiveness of HPV vaccination in Canada the linkage of multiple data registries may be required. These registries may not always be managed by the same organization and, furthermore, privacy legislation or practices may restrict any data linkages of records that can actually be done among registries. The objective of this study was to develop a secure protocol for linking data from different registries and to allow on-going monitoring of HPV vaccine effectiveness.A secure linking protocol, using commutative hash functions and secure multi-party computation techniques was developed. This protocol allows for the exact matching of records among registries and the computation of statistics on the linked data while meeting five practical requirements to ensure patient confidentiality and privacy. The statistics considered were: odds ratio and its confidence interval, chi-square test, and relative risk and its confidence interval. Additional statistics on contingency tables, such as other measures of association, can be added using the same principles presented. The computation time performance of this protocol was evaluated.The protocol has acceptable computation time and scales linearly with the size of the data set and the size of the contingency table. The worse case computation time for up to 100,000 patients returned by each query and a 16 cell contingency table is less than 4 hours for basic statistics, and the best case is under 3 hours.A computationally practical protocol for the secure linking of data from multiple registries has been demonstrated in the context of HPV vaccine initiative impact assessment. The basic protocol can be generalized to the surveillance of other conditions, diseases, or vaccination programs

Optimization of Ontology‐Based Clinical Pathways and Incorporating Differential Privacy in the Healthcare System

International audienc