Yogarajan, VithyaRagupathy, Rajan2019-04-1020192019-04-102019Yogarajan, V., & Ragupathy, R. (2019). Research using electronic health records: not all de-identified datasets are created equal. Journal of Primary Health Care, 11(1), 14–15. https://doi.org/10.1071/hc190101172-6156https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12455We read the article Research using electronic health records: balancing confidentiality and public good by Wallis et al. with great interest. The authors note general practices need to trust de-identification processes when releasing patient records.¹ Patients have also expressed concerns about de-identification practices.² De-identification encompasses a wide range of practices, and there are no universally accepted standards.²,³ We propose here a three-step scheme for judging de-identified health records: (1) the de-identification standards used (2) the performance of the de-identification system and (3) additional security measures taken to prevent re-identification. Such a scheme may be useful to ethics committees, researchers planning a project and health providers deciding whether to participate.application/pdfenThis is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licensecomputer scienceJournal Article10.1071/hc19010