Safeguarding privacy: the ICES experience

Privacy has become an issue larger than celebrity evasion of the paparazzi. While academic health research has observed strict vigilance in the guardianship of health information databases, new legislation faced by all organizations raises the bar. Short of building a moat to secure precious data, research organizations, such as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), are introducing increasingly rigorous policies to keep sensitive information safe while preserving the value of research.