CLINICAL TRIAL SUPPORT NETWORK DATA SECURITY

A clinical trial support network (1) has data processors (3, 10-15) which perform patient data attribute classification during clinical trial setup (120) by identifying attributes which are sensitive, the attributes being instantiated as terms in clinical trial records. For each identified attribute a risk value or weighting associated with the attribute is stored (124, 135). After this initialization, in real time a potential data posting is received, such as from a patient using an online portal or from a doctor managing a clinical trial group. The data processors perform real time privacy analysis (503) for the potential data posting, by using the risk values of attributes for which there are terms in the potential posting, to determine an overall risk level for the potential data posting. Once the analysis is performed the potential posting is transmitted or posted according to the result: blocked (511), full publication (508), or partial publication (507). The data processors, when executing algorithms to analyse a potential posting, use additional criteria including term frequency in the posting, count of instances of each term in the posting, and a total count of instances of terms which are potentially sensitive.