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Probabilistic linkage without personal information successfully linked national clinical datasets: Linkage of national clinical datasets without patient identifiers using probabilistic methods.

Blake, HA; Sharples, LD; Harron, K; van der Meulen, JH; Walker, K; (2021) Probabilistic linkage without personal information successfully linked national clinical datasets: Linkage of national clinical datasets without patient identifiers using probabilistic methods. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.04.015. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Probabilistic linkage can link patients from different clinical databases without the need for personal information. If accurate linkage can be achieved, it would accelerate the use of linked datasets to address important clinical and public health questions. OBJECTIVE: We developed a step-by-step process for probabilistic linkage of national clinical and administrative datasets without personal information, and validated it against deterministic linkage using patient identifiers. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We used electronic health records from the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) and Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) databases for 10,566 bowel cancer patients undergoing emergency surgery in the English National Health Service. RESULTS: Probabilistic linkage linked 81.4% of NBOCA records to HES, versus 82.8% using deterministic linkage. No systematic differences were seen between patients that were and were not linked, and regression models for mortality and length of hospital stay according to patient and tumour characteristics were not sensitive to the linkage approach. CONCLUSION: Probabilistic linkage was successful in linking national clinical and administrative datasets for patients undergoing a major surgical procedure. It allows analysts outside highly secure data environments to undertake linkage while minimising costs and delays, protecting data security, and maintaining linkage quality.

Type: Article
Title: Probabilistic linkage without personal information successfully linked national clinical datasets: Linkage of national clinical datasets without patient identifiers using probabilistic methods.
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.04.015
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.04.015
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Keywords: Electronic health records, National clinical datasets, Patient identifiers, Personal information, Probabilistic linkage, Record linkage
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10127503
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