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Rentsch CT, Kabudula CW, Catlett J, et al. Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL): A software tool to prospectively link demographic surveillance and health facility data. Gates Open Res. 2017;1:8doi: 10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1.
Rentsch, C. T., Kabudula, C. W., Catlett, J., Beckles, D., Machemba, R., Mtenga, B., Masilela, N., Michael, D., Natalis, R., Urassa, M., Todd, J., Zaba, B., & Reniers, G. (2017). Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL): A software tool to prospectively link demographic surveillance and health facility data. Gates open research, 18. https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1
Rentsch, Christopher T, et al. "Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL): A software tool to prospectively link demographic surveillance and health facility data." Gates open research vol. 1 (2017): 8. doi: https://doi.org/10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1
Rentsch CT, Kabudula CW, Catlett J, Beckles D, Machemba R, Mtenga B, Masilela N, Michael D, Natalis R, Urassa M, Todd J, Zaba B, Reniers G. Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL): A software tool to prospectively link demographic surveillance and health facility data. Gates Open Res. 2017 Nov 06;1:8. doi: 10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1. PMID: 29528050; PMCID: PMC5841575.
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Gates Open Res. 2017 Nov 06;1:8. doi: 10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1.

Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL): A software tool to prospectively link demographic surveillance and health facility data.

Gates open research

Christopher T Rentsch, Chodziwadziwa Whiteson Kabudula, Jason Catlett, David Beckles, Richard Machemba, Baltazar Mtenga, Nkosinathi Masilela, Denna Michael, Redempta Natalis, Mark Urassa, Jim Todd, Basia Zaba, Georges Reniers

Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, WC1E 7HT, UK.
  2. School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg , 2193, South Africa.
  3. SELECT Star, Atlanta, GA, 30309, USA.
  4. Independent Researcher, London, UK.
  5. The Tazama Project, National Institute for Medical Research, Mwanza, Tanzania.
  6. District Medical Officer, Ministry of Health Tanzania, Magu District, Tanzania.

PMID: 29528050 PMCID: PMC5841575 DOI: 10.12688/gatesopenres.12751.1

Abstract

Linking a health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) to data from a health facility that serves the HDSS population generates a research infrastructure for directly observed data on access to and utilization of health facility services. Many HDSS sites, however, are in areas that lack unique national identifiers or suffer from data quality issues, such as incomplete records, spelling errors, and name and residence changes, all of which complicate record linkage approaches when applied retrospectively. We developed Point-of-contact Interactive Record Linkage (PIRL) software that is used to prospectively link health records from a local health facility to an HDSS in rural Tanzania. This prospective approach to record linkage is carried out in the presence of the individual whose records are being linked, which has the advantage that any uncertainty surrounding their identity can be resolved during a brief interaction, whereby extraneous information (e.g., household membership) can be referred to as an additional criterion to adjudicate between multiple potential matches. Our software uses a probabilistic record linkage algorithm based on the Fellegi-Sunter model to search and rank potential matches in the HDSS data source. Key advantages of this software are its ability to perform multiple searches for the same individual and save patient-specific notes that are retrieved during subsequent clinic visits. A search on the HDSS database (n=110,000) takes less than 15 seconds to complete. Excluding time spent obtaining written consent, the median duration of time we spend with each patient is six minutes. In this setting, a purely automated retrospective approach to record linkage would have only correctly identified about half of the true matches and resulted in high linkage errors; therefore highlighting immediate benefit of conducting interactive record linkage using the PIRL software.

Keywords: data linkage; health and demographic surveillance systems; health facility; interactive record linkage; sub-Saharan Africa

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: No competing interests were declared.

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