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

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)

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