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NLM Scrubber: NLM s Software Application to De-identify Clinical Text Documents

NCT02795806 · Status: ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 50000

Last updated 2026-08-27

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Background: Electronic health records contain a vast amount of data about diseases and treatments. Researchers could use this data to test their ideas, but they would need to use records from more than just their own group of patients. But access to those records is restricted to ensure patient privacy.

U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) has created a computer tool called NLM Scrubber. This program recognizes and deletes personal information from health records. The researchers who developed this program now need access to the original records. This will allow them to see how well the program removes personal information from patient records and how they can make it more accurate.

Objectives:

To find ways to improve clinical text de-identification.

Eligibility:

No new participants. Researchers will review data that have already been collected.

Design:

Researchers will collect a random sample of reports. These will be from different doctors in different fields.

Researchers will manually remove personal information from the records.

Researchers will also automatically remove personal information from original records using NLM-Scrubber.

Researchers will compare the results of the computer program versus the manual changes. They will note when the program has not been removing personal information correctly. They will also note when the program has been deleting nonpersonal health information incorrectly.

Researchers will use the results to revise the program. They will keep testing it until the de-identification process is complete.

Conditions

  • Personally Identifiable Information

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • National Cancer Institute (NCI)

    collaborator NIH

  • National Institutes of Health Clinical Center (CC)

    collaborator NIH

  • National Library of Medicine (NLM)

    lead NIH

Principal Investigators

  • Mehmet M Kayaalp, Ph.D. · National Library of Medicine (NLM)

Eligibility

Min Age
1 Day
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2016-05-25
Primary Completion
2027-01-31
Completion
2027-01-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT02795806 on ClinicalTrials.gov