Mobile phone data for public health: towards data-sharing solutions that protect individual privacy and national security

We outline the constraints faced by operators when deciding to share de-identified data with researchers or policy makers. We describe a conservative approach that we have taken to harness the value of CDRs for infectious disease epidemiology while ensuring that identification of individuals is impossible. We believe this approach serves as a useful and highly conservative model for productive partnerships between mobile operators, researchers, and public health practitioners.