Affiliation:
1. National Association of County and City Health Officials, USA
2. California Polytechnic State University, USA
3. Brock University, Canada
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed the development of new record linkage technologies that are increasingly being used for data integration in various application settings. The authors’ objective in this article is to provide a review of recent developments in medical record linkage and their implications in healthcare research and public health policies. In particular, the authors assess the key advantages and possible limitations of record linkage techniques and technologies in various health care scenarios where different pieces of patient records are collected and managed by different agencies. First, the authors provide a brief overview of deterministic, probabilistic, and unsupervised record linkage techniques and their advantages and limitations. Then, the authors describe current probablistic record linkage software and their functionalities, and present specific cases where probabilistic linkage has been successfully used to enhance decision-making in healthcare delivery as well as in healthcare-related public policy making. Finally, the authors outline some of the critical issues and challenges of integrating medical records across distributed databases, including technical considerations as well as concerns about patient privacy and confidentiality.
Cited by
4 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献