Medication histories

Identifies medication histories references in healthcare and patient records. Protected health information under applicable data protection regulations.

Type

regex

Engine

boost_regex

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

identifier/document-structure anchored regex with constrained context replaces phrase-only detection. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Topic verified

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

GDPR, HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)

Data categories

healthcare, phi

Scope

wide

Risk rating

8

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:medication\s+history|prescription\s+history|drug\s+history|medication\s+list|dispensing\s+record|medication\s+reconciliation)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

medication histories, medication, histories, health, biomedical, information, drug name, drug strength, dosage, quantity prescribed, repeats, prescription, dispensing, compounding, data record, database record, record set, data extract, data export, database table (+18 more)

Proximity: 500 characters

Should match

• medication history — Primary topic phrase match
• prescription history — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
• drug history — Alternative topic phrase match
• medication list — Additional topic phrase match

Should not match

• unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
• placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
• patient biometric — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match

Known false positives

• Medical terminology in health education materials, research publications, clinical guidelines, or public health documents without patient-specific data. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords confirming patient context. Look for co-occurrence with patient identifiers such as medical record numbers or dates of birth.
• General wellness and fitness content using medical vocabulary without constituting protected health information. Mitigation: Layer with patient identifier patterns or healthcare-specific document structure detection to distinguish clinical records from general health content.

References

• https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2012A00063/latest/text
• https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03712/latest/text
• https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles-guidelines