The process of analyzing the effects of systemic symptoms on daily living will contribute to preventing systemic and oral disease. In this study, we used anonymized data from the Comprehensive Survey ...of Living Conditions 2016 to analyze the associations between 42 symptoms and their effects on daily living. The subjects were 8,332 individuals (4,022 men and 4,310 women) aged 40–69 years who provided valid responses to questions related to various symptoms. The analysis was conducted by carrying out (1) univariate analysis of the association between each symptom and its effects on daily living using a contingency table; (2) comparisons between the response rate order of each symptom depending on whether it affected daily living (rank difference test), and (3) binomial logistic regression analysis (multivariate analysis) with effects on daily living (model 1) and subjective health (model 2) as the target variables. Univariate analysis identified associations for 16 systemic symptoms, including “difficulty in limb movement” (odds ratio: OR 4.17), and two oral symptoms, “difficulty chewing” (OR 1.95) and “swollen or bleeding gums” (OR 1.42). A comparison of the mean rank difference of the symptom response rates for symptoms that did or did not affect daily living found that this difference was significant (p<0.001). Binomial logistic regression analysis showed that three symptoms had significant ORs, including “fracture/sprain” (OR 3.17), “difficulty in limb movement” (OR 3.00) for both analysis models. These results suggest that some symptoms are likely to have effects on daily living, and that they warrant attention in health guidance for adults and older people.
Abstract Objectives Indirect methods for the estimation of Reference Limits (RLs) use large data pools stored in modern laboratory information’s systems. To avoid correlation between observations ...repeated results from each patient should be excluded. Some data pools obtained are anonymized, and thereafter the data cannot be re-identified. The effect of the procedure of data selection on the estimations is not investigated yet. Methods We considered four parameters. Data sets were enclosed from two sources: a university hospital and a laboratory primarily reflecting a patient population from medical practitioners. Four algorithms were used for data selection, which generate first, last, all and non-repeated values. RLs were estimated through these data sets and compared. Results This study showed the broader reference range estimated by indirect methods if using the whole data set compared to first/last values or non-repeated values. Conclusions The use of all data without a filtering step results in a significant bias whereas the choice of first or last values has nearly no impact. The exclusion of repeated measurements results in narrower RLs. This influence confine the use of anonymous data sets where filtering is impossible for the estimation of RLs by indirect methods.
Readily available and affordable consumer-grade electronics, with ever-increasing sensing, computing, and communication capabilities, have provided the ground for distributed computation and data ...collection systems. Crowd-sensing applications rely on volunteers providing access to their personal devices-a category encompassing smartphones, wearables, vehicles, and a wide range of `Internet of Things' appliances-and using them as sensors. These systems rely on the willingness of participants to invest in a common cause, which often entails explicit efforts from users, occupation of hardware resources, and risks of sharing private data. Incentives and rewarding schemes are adopted to encourage user participation. This paper introduces the "Worth One Minute" (WOM) platform: an implementation of a general-purpose rewarding system based on anonymous vouchers. The platform is designed to reward user efforts towards the common good, rewarding their contributions and the intrinsic social value they provide, while preserving their anonymity.
Rationale and objectives The availability of anonymized data is a keystone of medical research, yet little is known about lay views towards the process of anonymization or on the way that anonymized ...medical data are transferred to researchers.
Methods During May and June 2009, as part of a wider consultation on methods for releasing data to researchers, three focus groups (n = 19) were conducted exploring lay attitudes towards the traditional ‘warehouse’ model commonly used in medical research for delivering anonymized National Health Service (NHS) data to researchers. The focus groups explored different processes such as the copying of data, use of programmers for linkage and anonymization, the transfer of data and governance.
Results The recognition of the positive aspects of medical research and desire to support it formed the context for discussions. Nonetheless, individuals varied in their attitudes to the use of anonymized data extracts for research from their health records (without consent); although some appeared positive wanted to be asked to consent for this use. Furthermore, participants were acutely aware of security breaches of NHS information nevertheless, they continued to display a high level of trust in NHS staff. Participants were concerned about the practicalities of the warehouse model and relied on their own life experiences to make sense of the model (using analogies with ‘banks’ or ‘libraries’). The general attitude towards the processes underlying the warehouse model might best be captured by the term ‘ambivalence’.
Conclusions This research (1) offers unique insights into views of anonymization of health data extracts, how it is undertaken and data are transferred and (2) adds to an increasing body of work that demonstrates that a minority of individuals are concerned about consent, even when data are anonymized although (3) those concerned about anonymization do not necessarily seek resolution through gaining consent.
Japanese statistics act was revised in 2007 for the first time since 1947. The new statistics act stipulates further use of statistical microdata and confidentiality. Every five years, concreate ...measures concerning the further use of statistical microdata has been included in the “master plan concerning the development of official statistics”, which is designated by the law. Thus, Japanese Government has been trying to promote the use of statistical microdata. After ten years since the revision of the statistics act, “fundamental policy on statistical reform”, determined by the council on economic and fiscal policy, proposed to establish a statistical reform promotion council. The council was established in January 2017, and summarized a broad direction on statistical reform in May. This paper introduces a situation on microdata access for official statistics in Japan after the revision of the statistics act, how to tackle challenges, discussion on statistical reform, revision of the master plan and future direction.
Zusammenfassung
Der Aufsatz plädiert für einen Paradigmenwechsel beim Zugang der Wissenschaft zu Daten der amtlichen Statistik. Das Vertrauensprinzip, das auf Zertifizierungsregeln beruht, schafft ...neue und effizientere Möglichkeiten des Datenzugangs über das Fernrechnen. Der Autor stellt die Entwicklung des Datenzugangs für die Wissenschaft unter dem bestehenden Bundesstatistikgesetz dar. Es werden alternative Zugangskonzepte aus Schweden, England und den Niederlanden vorgestellt. Der Aufsatz nimmt Bezug auf die diesbezüglichen Empfehlungen des Statistischen Beirates vom November 2012 und diskutiert deren Umsetzungschancen.
When designing smart cities' building blocks, mobility data plays a fundamental role in applications and services. However, mobility data usually comes with unrestricted location of its corresponding ...entities (e.g., citizens and vehicles) and poses privacy concerns, among them recovering the identity of those entities with linking attacks. To address the privacy of users' identity, Location Privacy Protection Mechanisms (LPPMs) based on anonymization have been proposed, such as mix-zones. Once the data is protected, a comprehensive discussion about the trade-off between privacy and utility happens. However, issues still arise about the application of anonymized data to smart city development: what are the smart cities applications and services that can best leverage mobility data anonymized by mix-zones? To answer this question, we present a methodology that evaluates the utility in many aspects with metrics related to privacy, mobility, and anonymized trajectories produced by mix-zones. The results showed that the proposed methodology identifies application domains of smart cities in which anonymized data can have more or less utility. Additionally, different datasets present different behaviors in terms of utility. These insights can contribute significantly to the utility of both open and private data markets for smart cities.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology, ICDCIT 2011, held in Bhubaneswar, India, in February 2011.The 18 papers ...presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 138 submissions. In addition the book contains the full versions of 6 invited talks. The papers are grouped in topical sections on distributed computing, sensor networks, internet technologies and applications, security, and bio-inspired computing.