dutch-med-hips 0.1.0

A hiding in plain sight module for Dutch medical text.

🇳🇱 dutch-med-hips

dutch-med-hips is a Python package for anonymizing Dutch medical reports using the Hide-In-Plain-Sight (HIPS) methodology. It replaces sensitive personal data with realistic surrogates while preserving the readability and overall structure of the text.

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🚀 Features

• Replace personally identifiable information (PII) with synthetic, context-aware surrogates.
• Supports replacement for names, dates, locations, hospitals, study names, phone numbers, IDs, and more.
• Uses real-world statistical distributions (e.g. for age, character frequency) to generate natural-looking output.
• Adds a disclaimer to the final anonymized report.
• Configurable behavior via JSON weight configuration files.

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📦 Installation

Create a fresh conda environment:

conda create -n dutch-med-hips python=3.11
conda activate dutch-med-hips

Install the package via pip:

pip install dutch-med-hips

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/DIAGNijmegen/dutch-med-hips.git
cd dutch-med-hips
pip install .

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🛠️ Usage

CLI

After installation, use the CLI to anonymize a report:

hips \
  --input_file path/to/input_report.txt \
  --output_file path/to/output_report.txt \
  --seed 42

Arguments:

• --input_file: Path to the file containing the original report.
• --output_file: Path to write the anonymized report.
• --seed: (Optional) Seed for reproducibility. Default is 42.
• --ner_labels: (Optional) List of NER labels for offset adjustment, currently disabled via CLI.

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Python API

from dutch_med_hips.hips_functions import HideInPlainSight

report = "<PERSOON> had a consultation on <DATUM> at <TIJD>."
hips = HideInPlainSight()
anonymized_report = hips.apply_hips(report)
print(anonymized_report)

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📄 Supported Tags

The following tags in the report will be replaced:

Tag	Replacement
<PERSOON>	Realistic person names
<DATUM>	Randomized date
<TIJD>	Randomized time
<TELEFOONNUMMER>	Synthetic phone number
<PATIENTNUMMER>	Synthetic patient ID
<ZNUMMER>	Synthetic Z-number
<PLAATS>	Dutch city
<RAPPORT-ID.*>	Custom report ID
<PHINUMMER>	Synthetic PHI number
<LEEFTIJD>	Realistic age (GMM-based)
<PERSOONAFKORTING>	Name abbreviation
<ZIEKENHUIS>	Dutch hospital
<ACCREDATIE_NUMMER>	Accreditation number
<STUDIE-NAAM>	Study name (optionally with UZR code)

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⚙️ Configuration

The package loads a configuration files and multiple lookup lists from its config/ directory. Modify these files to adjust behavior without changing the code. In particular, config/config.json contains weights for various replacement strategies. Adjust these to fit your dataset needs.

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🤝 Contributing

Want to help improve Dutch Med HIPS?

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create your feature branch.
3. Submit a pull request with tests if applicable.