<P> Under the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), PHI that is linked based on the following list of 18 identifiers must be treated with special care: </P> <Ol> <Li> Names </Li> <Li> All geographical identifiers smaller than a state, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: the geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and the initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000 </Li> <Li> Dates (other than year) directly related to an individual </Li> <Li> Phone numbers </Li> <Li> Fax numbers </Li> <Li> Email addresses </Li> <Li> Social Security numbers </Li> <Li> Medical record numbers </Li> <Li> Health insurance beneficiary numbers </Li> <Li> Account numbers </Li> <Li> Certificate / license numbers </Li> <Li> Vehicle identifiers and serial numbers, including license plate numbers; </Li> <Li> Device identifiers and serial numbers; </Li> <Li> Web Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) </Li> <Li> Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers </Li> <Li> Biometric identifiers, including finger, retinal and voice prints </Li> <Li> Full face photographic images and any comparable images </Li> <Li> Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code except the unique code assigned by the investigator to code the data </Li> </Ol> <Li> All geographical identifiers smaller than a state, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the Bureau of the Census: the geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and the initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000 </Li> <Li> Dates (other than year) directly related to an individual </Li>

Example of protected health information ( phi )