Patient addresses, geocoded where they are
Linking patients to neighbourhoods, distances and exposures starts with geocoding their addresses. Done on your own machine, the addresses never reach a vendor, and the output can be masked or counted by cell before anyone else sees it.
Geocode, then publish without points
gridpin batch usa.bin patients.csv geocoded.csv --with verdict gridpin batch usa.bin patients.csv by_cell.csv --aggregate h3:7 --min-count 11 gridpin batch usa.bin patients.csv masked.csv --mask donut:200-1000,k:20 --seed 7
--aggregate writes counts per cell and no coordinate at all; cells under --min-count merge into one line. --mask moves each point at random in a ring (donut masking, Hampton et al. 2010) and, with k, far enough that k addresses of the sheet lie within the move (Allshouse et al. 2010). k counts addresses of the sheet, not households. Details.
Compared with DeGAUSS
| DeGAUSS geocoder 3.4.2 | GridPin | |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | a Docker image | one binary, a Python, R or DuckDB package, or a Docker image |
| Data | 2021 TIGER/Line address ranges, United States | address points of Overture Maps and national sources; ranges only where there are no points; eleven countries |
| Answer | interpolated on a street segment (range), or street, intersection, ZIP, city | the house point where the sheet has it, else interpolated, street or town; each field's verdict with --with verdict |
| Same input, same output | yes | yes: the answer depends on the sheet and the engine version only |
| Masking, aggregation | separate steps | --mask, --aggregate in the same run |
| State | “maintenance mode”; development moved to addr and geomarker | developed; each sheet is a fixed build you can keep and cite |
DeGAUSS from its README, read on November 8, 2026.
No business associate agreement
A cloud geocoder that receives patient addresses for a covered entity is a business associate under HIPAA, and its processing of them needs a contract under the GDPR. Nothing leaves the machine that runs GridPin; check it yourself. This is not legal advice.