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Activity Number: 54
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Sunday, August 4, 2013 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
Abstract - #307422
Title: Encrypted Versus Plain: Comparison of Record Linkages Using Privacy Preserving Probabilistic Record Linkage (P3RL): Results from a Simulation Study
Author(s): Adrian Spoerri and Kurt Schmidlin and Marcel Zwahlen*+ and Kerri Clough-Gorr
Companies: University of Bern and University of Bern and University of Bern and Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern
Keywords: probabilistic record linkage ; bloom filter ; privacy preserving ; pre-processing
Abstract:

To assess performance of Privacy Preserving Probabilistic Record Linkage (P3RL) with Bloom filter encryption we compared different linkage strategies using real and simulated data. Methods: Real data (N=4486) from a Cancer Registry were linked to simulated data (N=200'000) based on the telephone registry. Names, first names, date of birth, sex, nationality, marital status, zip code and tumor category were used. The cancer cases were partially included into table B (97.8%). Table B was run through a data generation tool to create missing variables and through an error simulation tool to randomly simulate data errors. Several linkages with and without encryption and pre-processing were performed. We adapted GRLS, the linkage software from Statistics Canada, to handle Bloom filter hash codes and calculate dice-coefficients. Results: Record linkages with encrypted and unencrypted names gave similar results (in terms of sensitivity and positive predicted value): 99.3% of the cases in table A were found in B with encrypted and pre-processed names. Discussion: P3RL seems a valid alternative to the use of unencrypted names but needs carefully and locally adapted pre-processing of names.


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