Data quality improvement is becoming an increasingly important issue. In contexts where data are replicated among different sources, data quality improvement is possible through extensive data comparisons: whereas copies of same data are different because of data errors, comparisons help to reconcile such copies. Record matching algorithms can support the task of linking different copies of the...

The frequency of early fatality and the transient nature of emergency medical care mean that a single database will rarely suffice for population based injury research. Linking records from multiple data sources is therefore a promising method for injury surveillance or trauma system evaluation. The purpose of this article is to review the historical development of record linkage, provide a bas...

Many problems arise when linking medical records from multiple databases. Matching these data to other data is problematic since even small errors, such as data entry errors, different text format, and missing data, can prevent the exact-match algorithms. Evidence from previous studies suggested that approximate field matching represent a solution to resolve the problem by identifying equivalen...

As part of increased efforts to provide precision medicine to patients, large clinical research networks (CRNs) are building regional and national collections of electronic health records (EHRs) and patientreported outcomes (PROs). To protect patient privacy, each data contributor to the CRN (for example, a health-care provider) uses anonymizing and encryption technology before publishing the d...

There is currently a strong focus worldwide on the potential of large-scale Electronic Health Record systems to cut costs and improve patient outcomes through increased efficiency. A number of countries are developing nationwide EHR systems to aggregate services currently provided by isolated Electronic Medical Record databases. However, such aggregation introduces new risks for patient privacy...

Record linkage is the process of identifying which records in different databases refer to the same realworld entities. When personal details of individuals, such as names and addresses, are used to link databases across different organisations, then privacy becomes a major concern. Often it is not permissible to exchange identifying data among organisations. Linking databases in situations whe...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of an electronic nursing record system for perinatal care that is based on detailed clinical models and clinical practice guidelines in perinatal care. METHODS THIS STUDY WAS CARRIED OUT IN FIVE PHASES: 1) generating nursing statements using detailed clinical models; 2) identifying the relevant evidence; 3) linking nursing state...

We propose an unsupervised approach for linking records across arbitrarily many files, while simultaneously detecting duplicate records within files. Our key innovation involves the representation of the pattern of links between records as a bipartite graph, in which records are directly linked to latent true individuals, and only indirectly linked to other records. This flexible representation...