Sensitive data aliasing

1. A computerized method of processing sensitive medical data, comprising the steps of:

providing access to personal medical data sets in a storage device, wherein the personal medical data sets include encrypted data elements using a first encryption method; and

by operating at least one computer,

using aliases independent from the data elements to generate an association between the aliases and the data elements;

restricting access to the encrypted data elements to a set of authorized users; and

by providing a circuit interface communicatively coupled to the at least one computer, permitting qualified access to the aliases and the data elements;

using the aliases in place of the data elements for a set of standard users, where at least some of the standard users are not included in the set of authorized users; and

maintaining data, accessible by a data-processing circuit, including data elements corresponding to one or more aliases as indicated by an electronic request from the data-processing circuit for at least some of the personal medical data.

2. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including the step of allowing access, via the data-processing circuit, to aliases based on whether the electronic request indicates an access request by an authorized user, and providing selected portions of the sensitive medical data in response to the electronic request.

3. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including the steps of:

identifying an alias corresponding to data elements selected by an authorized user; and

providing the identified alias to said authorized user through the circuit interface.

4. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including the steps of:

identifying a data element corresponding to an alias selected by an authorized user; and

providing the identified data element to said authorized user through the circuit interface.

5. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including the step of:

decrypting the data elements and subsequently encrypting the data elements using a second encryption method; and

maintaining the association between the aliases and the data elements.

6. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including formatting the data elements to represent displayable characters.

7. The computerized method of claim 1 , further including the step of appending a portion of a data element to an alias associated with said data element.

8. The computerized method of claim 4 , further including the step of creating a log of activities by the authorized users and the standard users.

9. The computerized method of claim 1 , wherein the data elements are stored in a first database and the aliases are stored in a second database.

10. A computerized method of managing a database, including sensitive medical data, the database including encrypted data sets containing data elements and aliases to represent the data elements, the method including the steps of:

providing aliases to represent the data elements, the aliases being characterized independent of the data elements;

by operating at least one computer,

determining if the data elements are encrypted;

decrypting the data elements in response to a determination that the data is encrypted;

encrypting the data elements using a first encryption method resulting in encrypted data;

generating an association between the aliases and the data elements;

restricting access to the data elements to a set of authorized users; and

using the aliases in place of the data elements for a set of standard users, where at least some of the standard users are not included in the set of authorized users; and

by providing a circuit interface communicatively coupled to the at least one computer, permitting qualified access to the aliases and the data elements.