De-Identification of Protected Health Information Phi From Free Text in Medical Records

Medical health records often contain clinical investigations results and critical information regarding patient health conditions. In these medical records, along with patient health information, patient Protected Health Information (PHI) such as names, locations and date information can co-exist. As per Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), before sharing the medical records with researchers and others, all types of PHI information needs to be de-identified. Manual de-identification through human annotators is laborious and error prone, hence, a reliable automated de-identification system is need of the hour.