VA · VA-25-1082 · record R2107

Healthcare Text Anonymizer

Department of Veterans Affairs · VHA: Veterans Health Administration

Overview

Development stage: In development or acquisitionSource: a) Pre-deployment – The use case is in a development or acquisition status.
High-impact designation: High-impactSource: a) High-impact
Impact justification: Not reported
Start date: Not reported
Withheld from public reporting: Not reported

Mission

Topic area: Health and Medical
Operational functions: Clinical and medical Derived by keyword rules; see methodology

Problem the AI is intended to solve

This application reduces the manual processing time for anonymization and improves the accuracy of removing identifiable information in healthcare text. This is important because one of the applications of this project is to publicly release data on the medical impact of the new electronic health records system, Oracle. As Oracle gets rolled out to more facilities, there is a need to release more anonymized incident reports of Oracle's impact on patient health. Manually anonymizing all of these reports is not scalable nor sustainable, which is why this AI application helps.

Expected benefits

Increased efficiency and increased security of patient Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

System outputs

Excel file with additional column(s) of anonymized text - this application removes identifying information (name, addresses, etc.) in healthcare text.

Technology

AI classification: Agentic AISource: Agentic AI: AI systems that perform tasks or make decisions autonomously with minimal human intervention.
System name(s): Not reported
Custom-developed code: Not reported
Public source code: Not reported

Sourcing

How it was built: Not reported
Vendor (as reported): Not reported
Vendors (standardized): None on the standard list

A vendor is the supplier named by the agency. It does not identify the underlying model or AI technology.

Data and privacy

Involves PII: Not reported
Privacy Impact Assessment: Not reported
Authorization to Operate: Not reported
Demographic features: Not reported
Training and evaluation data: Not reported
Federal Data Catalog: Not reported

Governance

0 of 8 minimum-practice questions answered. A blank answer means the agency reported nothing; it does not mean the practice is absent.

Pre-deployment testingNo answer reported

AI impact assessmentNo answer reported

Independent reviewNo answer reported

Ongoing monitoringNo answer reported

Operator trainingNo answer reported

Fail-safeNo answer reported

Appeal processNo answer reported

User and public consultationNo answer reported

Potential impacts and how they were identified

Not reported