The Swiss solution for anonymously chaining patient files.

Being able to link the successive hospitalizations of a given patient for epidemiological surveys together by preserving patient anonymity requires a specific procedure. For its medical hospital statistics, Switzerland has adopted anonymous record linkage procedure, ensuring an irreversible transformation of identity and allowing the linkage of anonymous files. Concepts, algorithms and organization have been developed by the Federal Statistical Office. Algorithms are closed to those developed in Dijon University Hospital.