USING RECORD LINKAGE TO CONFORM THE PATIENT DIMENSION OF AN ANTIRETROVIRAL THERAPY DATA WAREHOUSE

摘要

South Africa is regarded as having the most severe HIVrnepidemic in the world. In response to this epidemic thernSouth African Government started with the provisioningrnof Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) in the public healthrnsector. Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of thisrnART programme is of the utmost importance. A datarnwarehousing approach was followed which integratedrnseveral independent operational sources into one datarnwarehouse that would deliver the required strategicrnmanagement information. A decision was made to breakrnthe project down into several data marts and to developrnthe data warehouse over a longer period of time. Most ofrnthe data marts contained a patient dimension. However,rneach operational data source had different unique patientrnidentifiers for identifying a patient and in some of thernoperational data sources a unique patient identifier wasrntotally absent. Furthermore, the attributes for each patientrnwas different for each operational data source. In order tornbe able to link the various data marts, the patientrndimensions had to be conformed. Record linkage, thatrnwas previously used to link files together, was used herernto conform the patient dimensions. The result ofrnconforming the patient dimensions was a very valuablernlongitudinal patient record.