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Deterministic record linkage versus similarity functions: a study in health databases from Brazil
Kátia Mitiko Firmino Suzuki1, Carlos Humberto Porto Filho, Luís Fernando Cozin
1School of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto (FMRP), University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil.
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
|August 8, 2013
Summary
Record linkage integrates patient data across healthcare levels. Using similarity functions like Jaro-Winkler significantly improves data accuracy, reaching 91.8% sensitivity.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Data Science
- Biostatistics
Background:
- Patient record linkage is crucial for integrating fragmented health information.
- Heterogeneous databases across primary, secondary, and tertiary Brazilian healthcare levels present linkage challenges.
- Existing deterministic methods often struggle with data inconsistencies like spelling and typing errors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the effectiveness of deterministic record linkage methods and various similarity functions for integrating Brazilian healthcare databases.
- To compare the sensitivity and specificity of different linkage strategies.
- To identify optimal approaches for improving patient data integration in diverse healthcare settings.
Main Methods:
- Employed a deterministic record linkage strategy.
- Utilized similarity functions including Dice, Jaro, Jaro-Winkler, and Levenshtein.
- Assessed linkage performance across primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare data.
Main Results:
- The deterministic method alone achieved 54.5% sensitivity.
- Allowing disagreement on one variable (mother's name) improved sensitivity to 80.6%.
- The Jaro-Winkler similarity function yielded the highest sensitivity at 91.8%.
Conclusions:
- Deterministic record linkage offers high specificity but limited sensitivity due to data errors.
- Adjusting linkage rules (e.g., allowing single variable disagreement) enhances sensitivity.
- Similarity functions, particularly Jaro-Winkler, are effective in improving the accuracy of patient record linkage in complex healthcare systems.
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