Incident Report De-Identification with anonym.plus

Healthcare Solution · Hospital Administration · DPA 2018 & NHS Confidentiality Code

Incident-report de-identification is the removal of personal data from a harm write-up. It meets the DPA 2018 & NHS Code of Confidentiality before reuse. anonym.plus does this on your own device, so the lesson stays while the names go.

When this applies

A fall or medication error gets logged with the individual, the nurse, and the ward. To pool such events for improvement work, you must clear those personal details first.

How anonym.plus handles it

1. Open the write-up in anonym.plus on your workstation.
2. Local OCR reads scanned or printed pages, so nothing slips by.
3. It flags patient names, staff names, dates, and the ward.
4. Check each flag and keep any non-ID safety code you need.
5. Swap each detail for a clear label, or black it out.
6. Save the cleaned file. The original never leaves your machine.

What you need to provide

• The write-up (PDF, DOCX, TXT, or image scan).
• An operator: Replace (swap), Redact (remove), or Mask (partial).
• Optional allow-list to keep your own event codes.

Patient data entity types detected

Compliance achieved

• Meets the DPA 2018 & NHS Code of Confidentiality for reuse.
• Clears patient names and the staff identifiers in one pass.
• Runs offline, so working files are guarded by AES-256-GCM.

Limitations & cautions

An incident write-up mentions both a patient and a worker. Both sets of identifying detail must go. Free-text lines can also hold a unique clue, like a rare event on a quiet ward, so give those a careful read before you export.