doctets

Doctets are a conceptual unit of information used in discussions of digital health data and lightweight telemetry. A doctet is defined as a minimal, self-describing data payload that encodes a single clinical observation or measurement, along with essential metadata such as a timestamp and a device identifier. The concept is used in theoretical models and in teaching about data minimization and privacy-preserving data sharing. It is not an official standard.

The term doctet is a portmanteau blending ideas of medical data with the notion of an eight-bit unit, reminiscent of the familiar octet in computing. It originated in academic and hobbyist discussions to illustrate how data granularity and privacy controls can be expressed at a small, transportable scale. Because it is not tied to a formal standards body, doctets are not widely adopted in formal health information exchanges or regulatory frameworks.

In practice, a doctet may include a data type tag, a de-identified patient key, a timestamp, a value, and optional qualifiers or quality indicators. Encodings vary and can include compact binary formats, JSON, or CBOR, with a focus on reducing identifying information and enabling secure, low-bandwidth transmission. Doctets often appear in educational demonstrations, simulations, or edge-computing scenarios where privacy-preserving data sharing is a priority.

Applications and limitations: Doctets serve as a teaching tool for data minimization and privacy considerations, as well as a thought experiment for streaming health telemetry. Their primary limitation is the lack of formal standardization, which risks interoperability and broad adoption across systems. See also octet, data packet, health informatics, privacy-preserving data handling.