Additional Release Notes: Caristix v2.8

Information for Cloak and Workgroup Users

With our recent v2.8 update, we made the default de-identification rules more robust. You’ll need to add fewer rules manually. But this means your default de-id rules are going to look different than previous versions. Here are some answers to some of the questions you might have.

What’s the change?

Unlike older versions, there is no single default de-id rule file. Default de-id rules are now HL7-version-based and will adjust to whatever HL7 v2.x version you pick as a reference profile.

How does this impact my de-identification work?

Your choice of reference profile has a bigger impact on your de-identified messages. Ensure you match your reference profile closely to the messages you want to de-identify. An example: if you have a batch of v2.4 messages, pick v2.4 as your reference profile.

Why this change?

When we first wrote the software, we created a default de-id rule file based on HL7 v2.6 to cover all HL7 versions. But as we heard back from our users, they were looking to avoid manually inserting de-id rules. So we extended the rules algorithm to cover additional ID and name locations in messages.

What happened under the hood?

We focused the default rules on data types, not fields. Data type is always impacted by the reference profile.

An example: let’s say your reference profile contains the XPN data type. In this profile, PID-2 and PID-4 contain XPNs.  We change the reference profile, and now PID-3 and PID-5 contain XPNs. With previous Caristix software versions, you would have to change your de-id rules to accommodate this difference. With Caristix version 2.8, you’d be good to go. You’ll have less manual work with de-identification rules with our latest update.

How to keep your old rules

If you have a set of rules, they’ll still be valid. Keep using them. Just keep in mind they’ll apply to different fields if you change reference profiles. So ensure that your reference profiles closely match your messages

How to create new de-id rules files

You’ll create them like you did before.

Questions?

Contact us at support@caristix.com.