Synthetic Data: A New Step Forward in Data Availability at Lifelines in collaboration with Syntho

Recently, we at Lifelines have been working on a new innovative solution to make our data more accessible for research, while enhancing the privacy of our participants. By using synthetic data from Syntho, we can now generate a synthetic dataset that has the same statistical properties as the collected original data, without including any data of our participants. The technique to generate synthetic data uses the real data to adopt the statistical patterns to generate a completely new, artificial dataset.

Synthetic data generation is a ‘Privacy Enhancing Technique’ (PET) that aims to protect and enhance the privacy of individuals. Such techniques help to minimize the amount of personal information exposed and reduce the risk of privacy breaches. For each data request from a researcher, we can now generate synthetic data by using Syntho’s synthetic data generation platform, providing each researcher with their own unique synthetic dataset.

We evaluate the synthetic data generated based on three properties: usability, utility and privacy. These outcomes provide us with information about privacy, the statistical similarities between the real data and the synthetic data, and the preserved relationships between variables. We do this based on statistics and visualizations, as shown in the figure (in this image, we see the average age per municipality of both the real data (left) and the synthesized data (right)).

Together with other experts and pioneers, we developed and improved this new synthetic data generation proposition of Lifelines. With the help of our partner Syntho, we successfully conducted the first explorations into the opportunities that data synthesis could bring for Lifelines. With their extensive knowledge of synthetic data generation techniques, we collaborated on the first synthetic datasets. In addition, we are extremely proud of the students who have conducted research with us on this topic. Both Flip and Rients laid the foundation for the adoption of Syntho’s platform that is now in use.

Having successfully completed the initial phase and exploration, Lifelines will continue the further deployment and adoption of synthetic data in collaboration with Syntho. Therefore, from now on, it will be possible for researchers and other stakeholders to work with synthetic Lifelines data. So, are you interested, or are you a researcher and would you like to know more about what synthetic data can do for your research? If so, let us know and we will be happy to help!