Real world health data are critical for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR). However, it’s often difficult, expensive, and time consuming for researchers to access real-world clinical health data because of privacy concerns, security restrictions, and usage issues. Although PCOR researchers, health information technology developers, and informaticists often depend on anonymized or de-identified clinical health data for testing theories, data models, algorithms, and prototype innovations, re-identification of anonymized data remains a possible security risk. Synthetic health data can provide a no-risk data source to complement research and support testing needs until real clinical health data are available.

Earlier today we announced the release of the Project US@ (“Project USA”) Technical Specification Final Version 1.0 and thereby completed our one year goal to coordinate the creation of a health care specification that could be used across the industry for representing patient addresses (mailing, physical, billing, etc.). This new “tech spec” will advance the health care industry’s proficiency in recording and managing accurate and consistently formatted patient addresses and support more efficient patient matching and record linkage.