Surrogate Substitution Preserves PHI Detectability: A Multi-Detector Equivalence Study
Quick summary
arXiv:2608.03172v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Structure-preserving de-identification replaces protected health information (PHI) with realistic same-type surrogates -- "Anna S." becomes "Maria S.", not [NAME] -- so that clinical text stays fluent and downstream tools keep working. But this only helps if the substitution does not itself corrupt the signal those tools rely on. We ask a narrow, testable question: on the spans a de-identifier actually masks, can downstream PHI detectors still find the surrogate? We introduce a paired, multi-detector evaluation protocol that (i) scores utility on
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2608.03172v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Structure-preserving de-identification replaces protected health information (PHI) with realistic same-type surrogates -- "Anna S." becomes "Maria S.", not [NAME] -- so that clinical text stays fluent and downstream tools keep working.
- But this only helps if the substitution does not itself corrupt the signal those tools rely on.
- We ask a narrow, testable question: on the spans a de-identifier actually masks, can downstream PHI detectors still find the surrogate?
Why it matters
“Surrogate Substitution Preserves PHI Detectability: A Multi-Detector Equivalence Study” highlights the need for repeatable measurement rather than a single impressive demonstration. Independent validation across datasets and clearly stated limitations determine whether a result can guide product decisions.
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