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Automated Patient Linking for Electronic Health Record and Child Welfare Databases
Judith W Dexheimer1,2,3, Sarah J Beal3,4, Parth Divekar2
1Division of Emergency Medicine, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH.
Insights
Automated algorithms successfully linked child welfare and electronic health records for children in protective custody. This integration improves health information sharing for vulnerable children.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Child Welfare Systems
- Data Integration
Background:
- Over 400,000 children are in U.S. protective custody.
- Fragmented data systems hinder critical health information transfer to caregivers.
- This data gap impacts the health outcomes of children in foster care.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and assess automated algorithms for linking child welfare data with electronic health records.
- To improve the accessibility of comprehensive health histories for children in protective custody.
Main Methods:
- Created ten custom algorithms for data linkage.
- Employed deterministic matching (name, DOB, gender) and non-deterministic matching (handling variations).
- Evaluated the performance of both matching strategies.
Main Results:
- Deterministic matching achieved a 91.3% linkage rate.
- Non-deterministic matching successfully linked 71.3% of remaining records.
- Demonstrated a scalable, automated approach to merge disparate datasets.
Conclusions:
- Integrated data sharing is crucial for enhancing health outcomes in protective custody.
- The developed algorithms offer a viable solution for merging child welfare and health data.
- This automated, scalable method can bridge critical information gaps for vulnerable children.
Abstract:
There are 427,000 children in protective custody in the United States. A lack of integration between the child welfare data system and electronic health record systems complicates the communication of critical health history details to caregivers. We created and evaluated automated ten custom algorithms linking these data. Deterministic matching was performed using combinations of first and last name, date of birth, and gender. If unmatched, a non-deterministic algorithm allowed for punctuation differences and letter transpositions. Of the children linked deterministically, 91.3% were linked. Of the ones undergoing non-deterministic matching, 71.3% were linked. Sharing integrated data is the first step in systematically improving health outcomes for children in protective custody. This approach represents an automatable and scalable solution that could help merge data from two disparate sources.
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