4.1 Personal Characteristics of Individuals

As described in Section 3: Scope and Figure 2, personal characteristics of individuals introduce the most significant risk with respect to identifying individuals in a data set. The following are examples of personal characteristics.

• Identifiers as defined in CA IPA

• Identifiers as defined in HIPAA

• Demographics typically reported in census and other reporting

  • Race

  • Ethnicity

  • Language Spoken

  • Sex

  • Age

  • Socio-economic status as percent of poverty

Personal characteristics are those characteristics that are distinctive to a person and may be used to describe that person. Personal characteristics include a broader set of information than those data elements that may be specifically defined as identifiers (such as, driver license, address, birth date, etc.). Personal characteristics may also be inferred from characteristics related to provider or utilization data. For example, if presented with information about a provider that only sees women, it can be inferred that the clients are women even if that is not specifically stated in the data presentation.