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Privacy Budget Management

Meaning

Privacy Budget Management is a specialized administrative and technical protocol, primarily utilized within the mathematical framework of differential privacy, that sets a strict, finite limit on the cumulative amount of privacy loss an individual’s sensitive data can incur over a series of analytical queries or data releases. Each time a query is run on a dataset containing hormonal or metabolic information, a small, quantifiable fraction of the total ‘privacy budget’ is expended, which formally quantifies the risk of re-identification introduced by that query. This systematic management ensures that the cumulative risk remains below an acceptable, predetermined clinical and ethical threshold.