Secure Decoupled Linkage (SDLink) system for building a social genome

Population informatics is the systematic study of populations via secondary analysis of massive data collections about people, called the social genome. A major challenge in building the social genome is the difficulty in data integration of heterogeneous and uncoordinated data while protecting the confidentiality of the data subjects. Here, we present our work in designing a flexible computerized third party linkage platform, Secure Decoupled Linkage (SDLink), which can provide both privacy protection and accurate high quality integrated data using a hybrid human-machine data integration system. Our evaluation results show that chaffing used in combination with universe manipulation is very effective in blocking inferences during the clerical review process.