Semantic anonymization of medical records

In recent years, especially with the backing of HIPPA, anonymization of records became an increasing concern. Much research has been done in the area of anonymization of medical records. Anonymization is often based on generalizing, or removing, several fields which have been deemed identifiable. Little research has been done on anonymizing patient symptoms themselves. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for anonymizing patient symptom data, for the use by researchers, using a semantically-driven ontology and methodology known as Ontological Semantic Technology.