Robert W Aldridge1, Kunju Shaji2, Andrew C Hayward3, Ibrahim Abubakar4. 1. Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, United Kingdom; Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control, Public Health England, London, United Kingdom. 2. Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control, Public Health England, London, United Kingdom. 3. Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, United Kingdom. 4. Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance and Control, Public Health England, London, United Kingdom; Department of Infection & Population Health and MRC Clinical Trials Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The Enhanced Matching System (EMS) is a probabilistic record linkage program developed by the tuberculosis section at Public Health England to match data for individuals across two datasets. This paper outlines how EMS works and investigates its accuracy for linkage across public health datasets. METHODS: EMS is a configurable Microsoft SQL Server database program. To examine the accuracy of EMS, two public health databases were matched using National Health Service (NHS) numbers as a gold standard unique identifier. Probabilistic linkage was then performed on the same two datasets without inclusion of NHS number. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to examine the effect of varying matching process parameters. RESULTS: Exact matching using NHS number between two datasets (containing 5931 and 1759 records) identified 1071 matched pairs. EMS probabilistic linkage identified 1068 record pairs. The sensitivity of probabilistic linkage was calculated as 99.5% (95%CI: 98.9, 99.8), specificity 100.0% (95%CI: 99.9, 100.0), positive predictive value 99.8% (95%CI: 99.3, 100.0), and negative predictive value 99.9% (95%CI: 99.8, 100.0). Probabilistic matching was most accurate when including address variables and using the automatically generated threshold for determining links with manual review. CONCLUSION: With the establishment of national electronic datasets across health and social care, EMS enables previously unanswerable research questions to be tackled with confidence in the accuracy of the linkage process. In scenarios where a small sample is being matched into a very large database (such as national records of hospital attendance) then, compared to results presented in this analysis, the positive predictive value or sensitivity may drop according to the prevalence of matches between databases. Despite this possible limitation, probabilistic linkage has great potential to be used where exact matching using a common identifier is not possible, including in low-income settings, and for vulnerable groups such as homeless populations, where the absence of unique identifiers and lower data quality has historically hindered the ability to identify individuals across datasets.
BACKGROUND: The Enhanced Matching System (EMS) is a probabilistic record linkage program developed by the tuberculosis section at Public Health England to match data for individuals across two datasets. This paper outlines how EMS works and investigates its accuracy for linkage across public health datasets. METHODS: EMS is a configurable Microsoft SQL Server database program. To examine the accuracy of EMS, two public health databases were matched using National Health Service (NHS) numbers as a gold standard unique identifier. Probabilistic linkage was then performed on the same two datasets without inclusion of NHS number. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to examine the effect of varying matching process parameters. RESULTS: Exact matching using NHS number between two datasets (containing 5931 and 1759 records) identified 1071 matched pairs. EMS probabilistic linkage identified 1068 record pairs. The sensitivity of probabilistic linkage was calculated as 99.5% (95%CI: 98.9, 99.8), specificity 100.0% (95%CI: 99.9, 100.0), positive predictive value 99.8% (95%CI: 99.3, 100.0), and negative predictive value 99.9% (95%CI: 99.8, 100.0). Probabilistic matching was most accurate when including address variables and using the automatically generated threshold for determining links with manual review. CONCLUSION: With the establishment of national electronic datasets across health and social care, EMS enables previously unanswerable research questions to be tackled with confidence in the accuracy of the linkage process. In scenarios where a small sample is being matched into a very large database (such as national records of hospital attendance) then, compared to results presented in this analysis, the positive predictive value or sensitivity may drop according to the prevalence of matches between databases. Despite this possible limitation, probabilistic linkage has great potential to be used where exact matching using a common identifier is not possible, including in low-income settings, and for vulnerable groups such as homeless populations, where the absence of unique identifiers and lower data quality has historically hindered the ability to identify individuals across datasets.
Authors: Neeraj M Shah; Jennifer A Davidson; Laura F Anderson; Maeve K Lalor; Jusang Kim; H Lucy Thomas; Marc Lipman; Ibrahim Abubakar Journal: BMC Infect Dis Date: 2016-05-06 Impact factor: 3.090
Authors: Augusto Afonso Guerra Junior; Ramon Gonçalves Pereira; Eli Iola Gurgel; Mariangela Cherchiglia; Leonardo Vinicius Dias; Juliano D Ávila; Núbia Santos; Afonso Reis; Francisco Assis Acurcio; Wagner Meira Junior Journal: Int J Popul Data Sci Date: 2018-11-14
Authors: Rishi K Gupta; Swaib A Lule; Maria Krutikov; Lara Gosce; Nathan Green; Jo Southern; Ambreen Imran; Robert W Aldridge; Heinke Kunst; Marc Lipman; William Lynn; Helen Burgess; Asif Rahman; Dee Menezes; Ananna Rahman; Simon Tiberi; Peter J White; Ibrahim Abubakar Journal: Eur Respir J Date: 2021-06-24 Impact factor: 16.671
Authors: Robert W Aldridge; Dominik Zenner; Peter J White; Elizabeth J Williamson; Morris C Muzyamba; Poonam Dhavan; Davide Mosca; H Lucy Thomas; Maeve K Lalor; Ibrahim Abubakar; Andrew C Hayward Journal: Lancet Date: 2016-10-11 Impact factor: 79.321