A naturalistic patient matching algorithm: Derivation and validation

We describe a novel naturalistic approach that is a hybrid of both deterministic (exact) and probabilistic ("close") systems that allows for manual adjudication of cases where necessary, but whose basis stems from the thought processes that a rational individual would follow in the comparison of medical records. A validation of this algorithm using large databases from two disparate sources demonstrates that the naturalistic approach can largely eliminate false positives (false matches) and false negatives (false mismatches).
Source: Health Informatics Journal - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Articles Source Type: research