New Technology and Implications for Healthcare and Public Health

2010 ◽  
pp. 197-215
Author(s):  
Gulzar H. Shah ◽  
Kaveepan Lertwachara ◽  
Anteneh Ayanso
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Record Linkage ◽  
Distributed Databases ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Healthcare Research ◽  
Patient Privacy ◽  
Probabilistic Record Linkage ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Health Communities

In this chapter, the authors provide a review of recent developments in probabilistic record linkage and their implications in healthcare research and public health policies. Their primary objective is to pique the interest of researchers and practitioners in the healthcare and public health communities to take full advantage of record linkage technologies in completing a health care scenario where different pieces of patient records are collected and managed by different agencies. A brief overview of probabilistic record linkage, software available for such record linkage, and type of functions provided by probabilistic record linkage software is provided. Specific cases where probabilistic linkage has been used to bridge information gaps in informing public health policy and enhancing decision-making in healthcare delivery are described in this chapter. Issues and challenges of integrating medical records across distributed databases are also outlined, including technical considerations as well as concerns about patient privacy and confidentiality.

Record Linkage in Healthcare

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gulzar H. Shah ◽  
Kaveepan Lertwachara ◽  
Anteneh Ayanso
Keyword(s):  
Record Linkage ◽  
Distributed Databases ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Healthcare Research ◽  
Medical Record Linkage ◽  
Patient Privacy ◽  
Probabilistic Linkage ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Privacy And Confidentiality

Recent years have witnessed the development of new record linkage technologies that are increasingly being used for data integration in various application settings. The authors’ objective in this article is to provide a review of recent developments in medical record linkage and their implications in healthcare research and public health policies. In particular, the authors assess the key advantages and possible limitations of record linkage techniques and technologies in various health care scenarios where different pieces of patient records are collected and managed by different agencies. First, the authors provide a brief overview of deterministic, probabilistic, and unsupervised record linkage techniques and their advantages and limitations. Then, the authors describe current probablistic record linkage software and their functionalities, and present specific cases where probabilistic linkage has been successfully used to enhance decision-making in healthcare delivery as well as in healthcare-related public policy making. Finally, the authors outline some of the critical issues and challenges of integrating medical records across distributed databases, including technical considerations as well as concerns about patient privacy and confidentiality.

scholarly journals Privacy preserving-probabilistic record linkage to assess cancer outcomes in people living with HIV in South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Bohlius ◽  
Lina Bartels ◽  
Frédérique Chammartin ◽  
Victor Olago ◽  
Adrian Spoerri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Record Linkage ◽  
Cancer Control ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Privacy Preserving ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
Patient Privacy ◽  
Cancer Outcomes ◽  
Probabilistic Record Linkage ◽  
Living With Hiv

Background: Privacy-preserving probabilistic record linkage (PPPRL) methods were developed and applied in high-income countries to link records within and between organizations under strict privacy protections. PPPRL has not yet been used in African settings.Methods: We used HIV-related laboratory records from National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) in South Africa to construct a cohort of HIV-positive patients and link them to the National Cancer Registry (NCR) with PPPRL. The study was restricted to Gauteng province from 2004 to 2014. We used records with national IDs (gold standard) to determine precision, recall, and f-measure of the linkages. We included all patients with ≥ 2 HIV-related lab records measured in the cohort and assessed the number of cancers diagnosed in people living with HIV (PLWH).Results: We included 11,480,118 HIV-related laboratory records and 664,869 cancer records in the linkage. We included 1,173,908 persons in the HIV cohort; 66.6% were female and median age at first HIV-related lab test was 33.9 years (IQR 27.4-41.3). Of the patients in the cohort, 26,348 were diagnosed with at least one cancer and 8,329 of these cancers were diagnosed before or on the date of the patient’s first HIV-related record; 18,019 were diagnosed after their first HIV-related record. For all linkages, precision, recall, and f-measures were high.Conclusion: Our study showed it is feasible to use PPPRL in an African setting to link routinely collected health records from different data sources and create a longitudinal HIV cohort with cancer outcomes while strictly protecting patient privacy. This work served as the foundation to create a nationwide population-based cohort including all South African provinces which will be used to inform cancer control programs.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Gambling-Related Harm Measurement: Lessons from the Last Decade

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 4395
Author(s):  
Matthew Browne ◽  
Vijay Rawat ◽  
Catherine Tulloch ◽  
Cailem Murray-Boyle ◽  
Matthew Rockloff
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Health Utility ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Psychometric Evidence ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Utility Metrics ◽  
Gambling Harms ◽  
Related Harm

Jurisdictions around the world have a self-declared mandate to reduce gambling-related harm. However, historically, this concept has suffered from poor conceptualisation and operationalisation. However, recent years have seen swift advances in measuring gambling harm, based on the principle of it being a quantifiable decrement to the health and wellbeing of the gambler and those connected to them. This review takes stock of the background and recent developments in harm assessment and summarises recent research that has validated and applied the Short Gambling Harms Screen and related instruments. We recommend that future work builds upon the considerable psychometric evidence accumulated for the feasibility of direct elicitation of harmful consequences. We also advocate for grounding harms measures with respect to scalar changes to public health utility metrics. Such an approach will avoid misleading pseudo-clinical categorisations, provide accurate population-level summaries of where the burden of harm is carried, and serve to integrate gambling research with the broader field of public health.

scholarly journals Reclink: aplicativo para o relacionamento de bases de dados, implementando o método probabilistic record linkage

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. de Camargo Jr. ◽  
Cláudia M. Coeli
Keyword(s):  
Record Linkage ◽  
Probabilistic Record Linkage ◽  
A Performance

Apresenta-se um sistema de relacionamento de bases de dados fundamentado na técnica de relacionamento probabilístico de registros, desenvolvido na linguagem C++ com o ambiente de programação Borland C++ Builder versão 3.0. O sistema foi testado a partir de fontes de dados de diferentes tamanhos, tendo sido avaliado em tempo de processamento e sensibilidade para a identificação de pares verdadeiros. O tempo gasto com o processamento dos registros foi menor quando se empregou o programa do que ao ser realizado manualmente, em especial, quando envolveram bases de maior tamanho. As sensibilidades do processo manual e do processo automático foram equivalentes quando utilizaram bases com menor número de registros; entretanto, à medida que as bases aumentaram, percebeu-se tendência de diminuição na sensibilidade apenas no processo manual. Ainda que em fase inicial de desenvolvimento, o sistema apresentou boa performance tanto em velocidade quanto em sensibilidade. Embora a performance dos algoritmos utilizados tenha sido satisfatória, o objetivo é avaliar outras rotinas, buscando aprimorar o desempenho do sistema.

scholarly journals HIV/AIDS coinfection with the hepatitis B and C viruses in Brazil

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvano Barbosa de Oliveira ◽  
Edgar Merchan-Hamann ◽  
Leila Denise Alves Ferreira Amorim
Keyword(s):  
Hepatitis B ◽  
Record Linkage ◽  
Ministry Of Health ◽  
Aids Patients ◽  
Probabilistic Record Linkage ◽  
Epidemiologic Surveillance ◽  
Hiv Virus ◽  
Epidemiological Profile ◽  
Hiv Aids

The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of HIV/HBV and HIV/HCV coinfections among AIDS cases reported in Brazil, and to describe the epidemiological profile of these cases. Coinfection was identified through probabilistic record linkage of the data of all patients carrying the HIV virus recorded as AIDS patients and of those patients reported as carriers of hepatitis B or C virus in various databases from the Brazilian Ministry of Health from 1999 to 2010. In this period 370,672 AIDS cases were reported, of which 3,724 were HIV/HBV coinfections. Women are less likely to become coinfected than men and the chance of coinfection increases with age. This study allowed an important evaluation of HBV/HIV and HCV/HIV coinfections in Brazil using information obtained via merging secondary databases from the Ministry of Health, without conducting seroprevalence research. The findings of this study might be important for planning activities of the Brazilian epidemiologic surveillance agencies.

scholarly journals Engaging Ethical Issues Associated with Research and Public Health Interventions During Humanitarian Crises: Review of a Dialogic Workshop

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anushree Dave ◽  
Julie Cumin ◽  
Ryoa Chung ◽  
Matthew Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Health Equity Research

On November 7th, 2014 the Humanitarian Health Ethics Workshop was held at McGill University, in Montreal. Co-hosted by the Montreal Health Equity Research Consortium and the Humanitarian Health Ethics Network, the event included six presentations and extensive discussion amongst participants, including researchers from Canada, Haiti, India, Switzerland and the US. Participants had training in disciplines including anthropology, bioethics, medicine, occupational therapy, philosophy, physical therapy, political science, public administration and public health. The objective of the workshop was to create a forum for discussion amongst scholars and practitioners interested in the ethics of healthcare delivery, research and public health interventions during humanitarian crises. This review is a summary of the presentations given, key themes that emerged during the day’s discussions, and avenues for future research that were identified.

scholarly journals SARS-CoV-2 and human milk: what is the evidence?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Lackey ◽  
Ryan M. Pace ◽  
Janet E. Williams ◽  
Lars Bode ◽  
Sharon M. Donovan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Milk ◽  
Vertical Transmission ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Single Study ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Specific Igg ◽  
Health Communities ◽  
Human Coronaviruses ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

ABSTRACTThe novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has emerged as one of the most compelling and concerning public health challenges of our time. To address the myriad issues generated by this pandemic, an interdisciplinary breadth of research, clinical, and public health communities has rapidly engaged to collectively find answers and solutions. One area of active inquiry is understanding the mode(s) of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. While respiratory droplets are a known mechanism of transmission, other mechanisms are likely. Of particular importance to global health is the possibility of vertical transmission from infected mothers to infants through breastfeeding or consumption of human milk. However, there is limited published literature related to vertical transmission of any human coronaviruses (including SARS-CoV-2) via human milk and/or breastfeeding. Results of the literature search reported here (finalized on April 17, 2020) revealed a single study providing some evidence of vertical transmission of human coronavirus 229E; a single study evaluating presence of SARS-CoV in human milk (it was negative); and no published data on MERS-CoV and human milk. We identified 12 studies reporting human milk tested for SARS-CoV-2; one study detected the virus in one milk sample, and another study detected SARS-CoV-2 specific IgG in milk. Importantly, none of the studies on coronaviruses and human milk report validation of their collection and analytical methods for use in human milk. These reports are evaluated here, and their implications related to the possibility of vertical transmission of coronaviruses (in particular, SARS-CoV-2) during breastfeeding are discussed.

scholarly journals Record Linkage Methodology for the Social Data Linkage Environment at Statistics Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Babyak ◽  
Abdelnasser Saidi
Keyword(s):  
Computational Complexity ◽  
Record Linkage ◽  
False Positive ◽  
Linked Data ◽  
Data Linkage ◽  
Social Data ◽  
Probabilistic Record Linkage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Statistics Canada

ABSTRACTObjectivesThe objectives of this talk are to introduce Statistics Canada’s Social Data Linkage Environment (SDLE) and to explain the methodology behind the creation of the central depository and how both deterministic and probabilistic record linkage techniques are used to maintain and expand the environment.ApproachWe will start with a brief overview of the SDLE and then continue with a discussion of how both deterministic linkages and probabilistic linkages (using Statistic Canada’s generalized record linkage software, G-Link) have been combined to create and maintain a very large central depository, which can in turn be linked to virtually any social data source for the ultimate end goal of analysis.ResultsAlthough Canada has a population of about 36 million people, the central depository contains some 300 million records to represent them, due to multiple addresses, names, etc. Although this allows for a significant reduction in missing links, it raises the spectre of additional false positive matches and has added computational complexity which we have had to overcome.ConclusionThe combination of deterministic and probabilistic record linkage strategies has been effective in creating the central depository for the SDLE. As more and more data are linked to the environment and we continue to refine our methodology, we can now move on to the ultimate goal of the SDLE, which is to analyze this vast wealth of linked data.

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