Real or fake? The buzz about synthetic data | Les données synthétiques : vraies ou fausses?

Info Matters

Dr. Khaled El Emam is a Canada Research Chair in Medical Artificial Intelligence and a professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Medicine. He is a co-founder of Replica Analytics.

• Developing privacy enhancing technologies to enable access to health data to support research [3:46]
• What is synthetic data? [5:36]
• Anonymous versions of real clinical data sets [8:36]
• Testing synthetic data to determine privacy risks [9:02]
• Examples of real world use cases in Canada [10:06]
• Re-identification attacks and loss of trust in traditional methods [12:31]
• Comparing statistical properties of synthetic data to the real thing [14:15]
• Is synthetic data really just like the real thing? [14:21]
• How synthetic data is made using artificial intelligence technologies [15:05]
• Use of synthetic data for research is expected to accelerate, increasing the need for practical regulatory guidance [16:47]
• Reducing uncertainty to fuel innovation [19:30]
• The need for clear rules around consent and thresholds for identifiable versus unidentifiable data [23:13]

Resources:

• The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What it means, how to respond (article by Klaus Schwab)
• Even better than the real thing: Simulated, anonymized data could be key to health-care innovations (University of Alberta research project)
• Top 10 strategic predictions for 2022 and beyond (Gartner)
• Trust in digital health: IPC strategic priorities 2021-2025 (IPC strategic plan)
• IPC Comments on the Ontario Government’s Consultation on Ontario’s Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) Framework (IPC Submission, June 2021)
• De-identification guidelines for structured data (IPC guidance)

Info Matters is a podcast about people, privacy, and access to information hosted by Patricia Kosseim, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. We dive into conversations with people from all walks of life and hear stories about the access and privacy issues that matter most to them.

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