Abstract
BACKGROUND: A unique study identifier serves as a key for linking research data about a study subject without revealing protected health information in the identifier. While sufficient for single-site and limited-scale studies, the use of common unique study identifiers has several drawbacks for large multicenter studies, where thousands of research participants may be recruited from multiple sites. An important property of study identifiers is error tolerance (or validatable), in that inadvertent editing mistakes during their transmission and use will most likely result in invalid study identifiers.
OBJECTIVE: This paper introduces a novel method called "Randomized N-gram Hashing (NHash)," for generating unique study identifiers in a distributed and validatable fashion, in multicenter research. NHash has a unique set of properties: (1) it is a pseudonym serving the purpose of linking research data about a study participant for research purposes; (2) it can be generated automatically in a completely distributed fashion with virtually no risk for identifier collision; (3) it incorporates a set of cryptographic hash functions based on N-grams, with a combination of additional encryption techniques such as a shift cipher; (d) it is validatable (error tolerant) in the sense that inadvertent edit errors will mostly result in invalid identifiers.
METHODS: NHash consists of 2 phases. First, an intermediate string using randomized N-gram hashing is generated. This string consists of a collection of N-gram hashes f1, f2, ..., fk. The input for each function fi has 3 components: a random number r, an integer n, and input data m. The result, fi(r, n, m), is an n-gram of m with a starting position s, which is computed as (r mod |m|), where |m| represents the length of m. The output for Step 1 is the concatenation of the sequence f1(r1, n1, m1), f2(r2, n2, m2), ..., fk(rk, nk, mk). In the second phase, the intermediate string generated in Phase 1 is encrypted using techniques such as shift cipher. The result of the encryption, concatenated with the random number r, is the final NHash study identifier.
RESULTS: We performed experiments using a large synthesized dataset comparing NHash with random strings, and demonstrated neglegible probability for collision. We implemented NHash for the Center for SUDEP Research (CSR), a National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke-funded Center Without Walls for Collaborative Research in the Epilepsies. This multicenter collaboration involves 14 institutions across the United States and Europe, bringing together extensive and diverse expertise to understand sudden unexpected death in epilepsy patients (SUDEP).
CONCLUSIONS: The CSR Data Repository has successfully used NHash to link deidentified multimodal clinical data collected in participating CSR institutions, meeting all desired objectives of NHash.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2015
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://doi.org/10.2196/medinform.4959
Funding Information
This research was supported by the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)–funded Center Without Walls for Collaborative Research in the Epilepsies U01 awards (U01NS090408 and U01NS090405), as well as the University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science (Clinical and Translational Science Award UL1TR000117).
Repository Citation
Zhang, Guo-Qiang; Tao, Shiqiang; Xing, Guangming; Mozes, Jeno; Zonjy, Bilal; Lhatoo, Samden D.; and Cui, Licong, "NHash: Randomized N-Gram Hashing for Distributed Generation of Validatable Unique Study Identifiers in Multicenter Research" (2015). Institute for Biomedical Informatics Faculty Publications. 1.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/bmi_facpub/1
Notes/Citation Information
Published in JMIR Medical Informatics, v. 3, no. 4, article e35, p. 1-11.
©Guo-Qiang Zhang, Shiqiang Tao, Guangming Xing, Jeno Mozes, Bilal Zonjy, Samden D Lhatoo, Licong Cui. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 10.11.2015.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Informatics, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://medinform.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.