Bridging presidio and spacy

Bridging Presidio, spaCy & LangChain

OpenMed interoperates with the dominant PII/NLP ecosystems through a single, lazy adapter registry: openmed.interop. Adapters live behind explicit imports, so importing openmed never drags in Presidio, spaCy, or LangChain — each is an optional extra you install only when you need that bridge.

When to use

Reach for a bridge when:

• you already run Microsoft Presidio and want OpenMed's clinical PII recall on top (or to feed OpenMed spans back into Presidio's anonymizer);
• you have a spaCy pipeline and want OpenMed PII spans on the Doc;
• you build LangChain chains and want to redact PHI before text reaches an LLM (the on-device guardrail in front of a cloud model);
• you need OpenMed's de-identification reachable from an existing framework instead of rewriting the pipeline around openmed.deidentify.

The lazy adapter registry (verified)

import openmed.interop as interop

interop.available_adapters()
# ('cda', 'hl7v2', 'langchain', 'presidio', 'spacy')

spec = interop.adapter_spec("presidio")
# AdapterSpec(name='presidio', module='openmed.interop.presidio',
#             extra='presidio', description='Presidio RecognizerResult adapter')

mod = interop.get_adapter("presidio")        # imports openmed.interop.presidio
# Attribute access also works lazily:
openmed.interop.presidio                      # same module, imported on first touch

available_adapters() and adapter_spec() never import the adapter module, so they are safe to call for discovery even without the extra installed. get_adapter(name) (and attribute access) triggers the import — and the adapter's own optional dependency.

Install only the extra you need:

pip install "openmed[presidio]"     # Presidio RecognizerResult adapter
pip install "openmed[spacy]"        # spaCy openmed_deid component
pip install "openmed[langchain]"    # LangChain redaction runnable
# cda and hl7v2 adapters ship in core (no extra) — see their own skills

Presidio bridge (verified callables)

Module openmed.interop.presidio converts between Presidio RecognizerResults and OpenMed canonical PIIEntitys, and merges both detectors through OpenMed's semantic-unit merger.

from openmed.interop.presidio import (
    to_canonical,        # RecognizerResult(s) -> [PIIEntity]
    from_canonical,      # [PIIEntity] -> [RecognizerResult]  (needs presidio extra)
    merge_with_openmed,  # combine OpenMed + Presidio spans, resolve overlaps
    PresidioAdapterConfig,
)
import openmed

text = "Dr. Smith called patient at 617-555-0123 on 2024-03-02."

# Presidio gives you RecognizerResults; OpenMed gives PIIEntities.
openmed_spans = openmed.extract_pii(text).entities
presidio_results = analyzer.analyze(text=text, language="en")   # your Presidio analyzer

merged = merge_with_openmed(
    openmed_spans, presidio_results, text=text,
    config=PresidioAdapterConfig(preserve_presidio_labels=True),
)
# -> de-duplicated [PIIEntity]; overlaps resolved by score, length, OpenMed-origin

Why merge instead of union: merge_with_openmed runs both detectors' spans through merge_entities_with_semantic_units, so overlapping/adjacent detections collapse into one correct span (e.g. PHONE from Presidio vs a partial OpenMed hit) rather than producing double redactions. Label mapping is built in (Presidio PHONE_NUMBER ↔ OpenMed PHONE, US_SSN ↔ SSN, etc.).

To push OpenMed spans into Presidio's anonymizer, convert back:

results = from_canonical(openmed_spans)        # [RecognizerResult]
anonymized = anonymizer.anonymize(text=text, analyzer_results=results)

spaCy bridge (verified factory)

Module openmed.interop.spacy_component registers a spaCy pipeline factory named openmed_deid. Add it to a pipeline and OpenMed PII spans land on the Doc.

import spacy
import openmed.interop.spacy_component   # registers the @Language.factory

nlp = spacy.blank("en")
nlp.add_pipe("openmed_deid", config={
    "confidence_threshold": 0.5,
    "lang": "en",
    "target": "openmed_pii",     # doc.spans key
    "merge_ents": False,         # set True to also write doc.ents
    "alignment_mode": "expand",  # char->token alignment: strict|contract|expand
})

doc = nlp("Patient John Doe, MRN 12345, seen today.")
for span in doc.spans["openmed_pii"]:
    print(span.label_, span.text)
# raw char-offset spans also available on doc._.openmed_pii

merge_ents=True writes the spans into doc.ents, resolving overlaps with spaCy's filter_spans. Use OpenMedDeidComponent / OpenMedDeidConfig directly if you construct the component outside add_pipe.

LangChain bridge (verified runnable)

Module openmed.interop.langchain exposes a Runnable-shaped redactor you drop in front of an LLM step so PHI never leaves the device.

from openmed.interop.langchain import (
    create_redaction_runnable, LangChainRedactionConfig,
)

redactor = create_redaction_runnable(
    config=LangChainRedactionConfig(method="mask", policy="hipaa_safe_harbor"),
    input_key="text",        # redact this key in a dict payload (optional)
    output_key="text",
)

chain = redactor | prompt | llm          # redact -> prompt -> model
chain.invoke({"text": "John Doe, MRN 12345, has type 2 diabetes."})

The transform redacts strings, LangChain Documents (page_content), lists, tuples, and mapping payloads. Use create_redaction_transform(...) for the dependency-light object (no langchain-core needed) and .as_runnable() when you want the RunnableLambda. LangChainRedactionConfig forwards the full openmed.deidentify surface (method, policy, confidence_threshold, keep_year, consistent, lang, ...).

Hand-off to / from OpenMed

• Into OpenMed: Presidio RecognizerResults and (implicitly) spaCy text become OpenMed PIIEntitys via the adapters; from there use the normal OpenMed de-id/audit/policy skills.
• Out of OpenMed: from_canonical → Presidio anonymizer; the spaCy component → downstream spaCy components; the LangChain runnable → any chain.
• The canonical object everywhere is openmed.core.pii.PIIEntity (text, label, confidence, start, end, entity_type, metadata).

Edge cases & gotchas

• Discovery is free; import is not. Call available_adapters() / adapter_spec() to probe without installing the extra. Touching the module (get_adapter/attribute access) raises a clear ImportError telling you the extra to install if it is missing.
• Offsets must match the same text. merge_with_openmed and the spaCy alignment both assume all spans index the same string. De-identify or normalise once, up front; do not mix offsets from pre- and post-normalised text.
• alignment_mode="expand" (spaCy default here) snaps char spans out to token boundaries; use "strict" if you need exact char alignment and accept dropped spans that do not align.
• LangChain redaction is a guardrail, not a guarantee. Gate de-id quality with openmed.eval leakage gates (evaluating-with-leakage-gates) before trusting it in front of a cloud LLM.
• Local-first holds across bridges. OpenMed inference stays on-device; only your downstream LLM/cloud step (if any) leaves the machine — which is exactly why you redact first.

Standards & references

• Microsoft Presidio: https://microsoft.github.io/presidio/
• Presidio RecognizerResult: https://microsoft.github.io/presidio/api/analyzer_python/#presidio_analyzer.RecognizerResult
• spaCy custom pipeline components: https://spacy.io/usage/processing-pipelines#custom-components
• spaCy Language.factory: https://spacy.io/api/language#factory
• LangChain Runnable interface: https://python.langchain.com/docs/concepts/runnables/