Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Which are the best identifiers for record linkage?

Catherine Quantin¹, Christine Binquet, Karima Bourquard

¹Department of medical informatics, Dijon University Hospital, France. catherine.quantin@chu-dijon.fr

Medical Informatics and the Internet in Medicine

|March 4, 2005

Summary

Accurate patient record linkage relies on informative identifiers. Date of birth, first, and last names are crucial for reliable data matching, while gender and second names can introduce errors.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Measuring performance trajectories in lung cancer surgery: a longitudinal study using the French national hospital database from 2020 to 2024.

BMJ health & care informatics·2026

Same author

Assessing and Improving Access to Health and Social Care Services for Children Rendered Vulnerable by Abuse: Protocol for a Cross-Sectoral Longitudinal, Mixed Methods, Multi-Country Study Using Nationwide Data in Europe.

International journal of population data science·2026

Same author

Parental acceptability of newborn screening expansion in the genomic era: A nationwide French survey informed by the Theoretical Framework of Acceptability (SeDeN-p3).

PloS one·2026

Same author

CONVICTION-CHIK study on the effect of convalescent plasma for mother-to-child Chikungunya infection: protocol for a multicentre, open label, single-arm, phase II trial.

BMC pregnancy and childbirth·2026

Same author

Multi-source data integration through pooling and transfer learning improves generalizability and specialization of deep learning models for ICU mortality and length of stay prediction: a four-database external validation study.

Critical care (London, England)·2026

Same author

Clinical phenotypes of severe dengue and their temporal evolution during a Reunion Island epidemic: a retrospective cohort study.

Travel medicine and infectious disease·2026

Area of Science:

Health Informatics
Data Management
Biostatistics

Background:

Accurate patient identification is critical for data integrity in healthcare.
Record linkage processes can be prone to errors if identifiers lack sufficient discriminating power.
Quantifying the informational value of different identifiers is essential for optimizing linkage accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

To evaluate the discriminating power of various personal identifiers for patient record linkage.
To determine the most effective identifiers for automated record linkage procedures.
To assess the impact of different data fields and phonetic treatments on linkage accuracy.

Main Methods:

Utilized an automatic record linkage procedure based on the Jaro method.

Related Experiment Videos

Compared the effectiveness of identifiers such as date of birth, first name, last name, gender, and second name.

Investigated the utility of a French phonetic treatment versus the Soundex algorithm.

Main Results:

Date of birth, first name, and last name were identified as the most informative identifiers for patient record linkage.
Inclusion of less discriminating identifiers like gender did not improve linkage results.
Phonetic treatment adapted to French showed potential for enhancing linkage accuracy compared to Soundex.

Conclusions:

Optimizing patient record linkage requires careful selection of highly discriminating identifiers.
The quality of identifier collection significantly influences the success of linkage processes.
Further research into language-specific phonetic treatments may improve automated record linkage accuracy.