Dr. Khaled El Emam appointed as Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario’s Scholar-in-Residence

02/05/2024

Ottawa, Ontario — Thursday May 2, 2024

As a globally recognized leader in privacy-enhancing technologies, including de-identification and synthetic data generation, Dr. Khaled El Emam, Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute (CHEO RI), has been appointed as the Scholar-in Residence at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC). 

The Scholar-in-Residence program provides an opportunity for experts and thought-leaders in their field to participate in the work of the IPC and apply their extensive knowledge to concrete policy development and advancing IPC’s strategic goals 

“I am eager to apply my knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence and synthetic data generation in a setting where it can have a broad impact across the health sector. The Scholar-in-Residence program is an incredible opportunity to explore how we can use data to its fullest, while protecting the privacy of individuals in Ontario,” said Dr.  El Emam, who is also Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical AI and Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. 

As the Director of the multi-disciplinary Electronic Health Information Laboratory at the CHEO RI, Dr. El Emam conducts research on privacy enhancing technologies to enable the sharing of health data for secondary purposes, including synthetic data generation and de-identification methods. 

In 2023, Dr. El Emam launched CHEO RI’s new software platform for generating synthetic data that improves access to electronic health record information and combined research datasets, while significantly reducing threats to privacy.  

Learn more about the IPC Scholar-in-Residence read Dr. El Emam’s guest blog. 

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