Replica Analytics Top 10 Round-up for 2022

By Replica staff

The beginning of a new year can be a good time take stock of the one that has come to a close. It has been a fantastic year at Replica Analytics, with too many great moments to count. That being said, we have tradition of producing an annual round-up where we highlight 10 moments from the past year.

1. In January, it was announced in a press release entitled Aetion acquires synthetic data trailblazer Replica Analytics, that Aetion, the leading regulatory-grade real-world evidence (RWE) technology provider, had become our parent company. With Replica, Aetion is opening up new avenues for better understanding treatment pathways, safety and effectiveness, and improve standards of care. It has been great to become part of the A-Team and we look forward to increased collaboration with our Aetion colleagues in the year ahead. You can read the press release at this link.
2. In February, we were invited to appear before Canada’s House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) to provide expert testimony and offer views on de-identification, in an effort to inform their study into the government’s collection and use of mobility data. It gave us an opportunity to offer 10 Recommendations for Regulating Non-identifiable Data, as Canada and other countries evolve their privacy laws. You can read more about our appearance at this link.
3. In March, the CHEO Research Institute wrote an article about Replica’s innovation story, entitled Synthetic data trailblazer and CHEO Research Institute spin-off, Replica Analytics, acquired by Aetion signalling CHEO as a place for incubating start-ups. Replica was incubated at CHEO and the article highlighted it as a good example of commercializing research to improve healthcare outcomes. We were later featured in their annual report as well. You can read the article at this link.
4. In April 2022 JMIR Medical Informatics published our study, Utility Metrics for Evaluating Synthetic Health Data Generation, which illustrates the effectiveness of our proposed approach to evaluating the utility of synthetic data, as no methods have been validated to compare the utility of synthetic data before this. You can read our paper at this link.
5. In May we organized a half-day event in Toronto entitled Perspectives on Regulating Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs), where we brought together regulators, CPOs and other experts for a stimulating series of discussions on the theme. You can view videos from that day at this link.
6. In June, our partnership with Critical Path Institute was announced in a press release entitled C-Path and Replica Analytics Collaboration to Accelerate Rare Disease Research. The initiative involves leveraging Replica’s synthetic data generation technology to further catalyze the creation of actionable solutions to accelerate drug development for rare diseases. You can read the press release at this link.
7. In July 2022 we announced our new estimator that uses synthetic data for much more reliable, demonstrable and evidence-based evaluation of re-identification risk in datasets, to effectively protect privacy. You can read the press release, entitled Replica Analytics’ new estimator uses synthetic data for more reliable evaluation of re-identification risks in datasets, at this link.
8. In September we announced the publication of our new book, The Cardinal Methodology for Evaluating Disclosure Risk for Non-Public Data, which is a complete and contemporary risk assessment methodology for accurately measuring and effectively managing the identity disclosure risks associated with sharing health data for secondary purposes. You can read the press release at this link.
9. In October we delivered our first Training Course on Practical De-identification Methods for Health Data in New York City. In this course, participants learn multiple practical data transformation techniques, such as risk-based methods and privacy-preservingsynthetic data  Given the great interest in the topic, we are organizing more training courses in 2023, including one in San Francisco in February and another in Barcelona, with others in the works. Participants of our 2023 course will receive the most up to date Cardinal Methodology publication, hot off the presses.
10. In November Innovate Cities announced in a press release entitled Innovate Cities announces partnership with Canadian technology provider Replica Analytics that our synthetic data generation technology will be leveraged for their data trust, City Shield. Looking forward, we invite you to save the date -- January 27 ^th, 2023 at 11 am ET -- for a webinar with our Innovate Cities partners, including Executive Director Hugh O’Reilly, their independent CPO Dr. Ann Cavoukian, and Private AI CEO Patricia Thaine. Registration will open in early January. You can read the press release about the partnership at this link.

Admittedly, crunching everything that occurred during such eventful year into a list of ten is simply not possible, however this still offers a sense of some of what we’ve been up to in 2022. If you’d like to keep up to date with Replica developments through a monthly newsletter, we suggest subscribing via our Contact Page.

In 2023 we will continue pushing the boundaries of problems that synthetic data generation can help solve, and develop the evidence necessary to support our offerings. We look forward to even more exciting things ahead in 2023!