A 200-patient synthetic table stayed unique after removing all identifiers

MaziyarPanahi · x · 2026-07-28

A synthetic 200-patient table can still be re-identified even after all obvious identifiers are removed: age, sex, ZIP code, and admission date alone can generate 74,550 combinations, making uniqueness the default.

The post says OpenMed 2.0 raised the threshold to k=15, but still refused to call the dataset safe. It also argues that expert review fields must remain placeholders and that a qualified expert should sign off with their own key only after the evidence bundle is complete.

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