Record linkage for routinely collected health data in an African health information exchange
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Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Swansea University
Abstract
The Patient Master Index (PMI) plays an important role in management of patient information and
epidemiological research, and the availability of unique patient identifiers improves the accuracy when
linking patient records across disparate datasets. In our environment, however, a unique identifier is
seldom present in all datasets containing patient information. Quasi identifiers are used to attempt to
link patient records but sometimes present higher risk of over-linking. Data quality and completeness
thus affect the ability to make correct linkages. This paper describes the record linkage system that is currently implemented at the Provincial Health
Data Centre (PHDC) in the Western Cape, South Africa, and assesses its output to date.
Description
Keywords
Bioinformatics, South Africa, Population studies, Health data, Health information systems
Citation
Mutemaringa, T. et al. (2023). Record linkage for routinely collected health data in an African health information exchange. International Journal of Population Data Science, 8(1), 07. https://doi.org/10.23889/ijpds.v8i1.1771