National Record Linkage of UK Hospital records and Death Registrations

• Activity Number: 9
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 8, 2004 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Leicester E. Gill*+
• Companies: University of Oxford
• Keywords: record linkage ; national files ; false positives ; false negatives

Abstract

We describe some of the innovative features of the Oxford Record Linkage Study (ORLS), the developments in probabilistic matching methods, and the use of intelligent and data-mining methodologies to select potential links between pairs of records. The ORLS person linked file contains a collection of linkable abstracts that comprise a health region in the United Kingdom. The ORLS file contains 12 million records for 6 million people and spans 39 years. This dataset is used for the preparation of person linked health services statistics, and for epidemiological and health services research. The policy of the ORLS is to comprehensively link all the records rather than prepare links on an ad hoc basis. The ORLS have developed improved techniques for deterministic and probabilistic linkage and also methods for reducing the amount of clerical review, which is time consuming, expensive, and of variable quality. The methodology has been extended and refined for matching and linking large UK government datasets, in particular the National Health Service Central Register (60+ million records), cancer registry, and other disease registers, and local authority registers.