Person-Matching by Electronic Methods

Record linkage in the updating of files is
accomplished in many establishments through the 
use of a preassigned number, such as payroll number,
customer number, or social security number.  In 
vital and health records, however, a unique number
is generally not preassigned to an individual for 
purposes of reporting services received to the health
department.  In order to determine whether different 
physician reports refer to the same individual, name
and other identification must be compared.  This 
is a laborious operation which is subject to various
errors because of name misspellings, changes of 
name upon marriage, and other problems.  We are interested
in the maintenance of a psychiatric case register 
in Maryland, where many of the reports from over a hundred
psychiatric agencies refer to the same patient. 
 These records must be linked in order to provide unduplicated
counts of individuals under care and longitudinal 
records of psychiatric history.  An earlier paper [1] describes
our general procedures for register maintenance 
by use of a digital computer (Honeywell 800).  Here
we present in more detail our initial procedures 
for the person-matching process in order to elicit comments
and suggestions from persons who have had 
experience in matching.

CACM July, 1962

Phillips Jr., W.
Bahn, A. K.
Miyasaki, M.

CA620730 JB March 17, 1978  7:51 PM

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