Identifying Duplicate Cancer Cases Across State Boundaries: Pseudonymization as a Method to Encrypt Identifiers.

Area of Science:

• Cancer Surveillance
• Public Health Informatics
• Data Linkage

Background:

• Accurate cancer burden estimation is crucial for public health.
• Duplicate cancer case reporting across state boundaries can distort data and waste resources.
• Existing methods for cross-state duplicate detection are limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To pilot a quality improvement project for identifying duplicate cancer cases across state boundaries.
• To evaluate the feasibility of using a publicly available encryption tool for patient identifier linkage.
• To assess the impact on cancer surveillance resource allocation.

Main Methods:

• Developed a protocol for encrypting standard patient identifiers.
• Utilized a publicly available tool for data encryption and linkage.
• Applied the method to a group of neighboring states to identify potential duplicate cases.
• Described challenges encountered during the pilot project.

Main Results:

• Preliminary results indicate the potential for identifying duplicate cancer cases across state lines.
• The encryption and linkage process was feasible.
• Challenges related to data standardization and inter-state collaboration were identified.

Conclusions:

• The pilot project demonstrates a viable approach to detecting and reconciling cross-state duplicate cancer cases.
• This method can enhance the accuracy of cancer burden estimates.
• Further efforts are needed to refine the protocol and expand its application.