Patient Record Linking via Assurance Level Definition
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Solution Overview
Problem
Healthcare practitioners face difficulties in accessing and verifying the reliability of patient records from multiple healthcare facilities, as these records are often independent and lack a universal identifier, making it challenging to ensure the accuracy and completeness of patient information.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that define a level of assurance in links between patient records by analyzing demographic attributes and receiving external confirmation, such as identification credentials or biometric information, to establish the reliability of patient record links.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If patient records are maintained independently by different healthcare facilities, then each facility can maintain control and security of its records, but healthcare practitioners cannot easily access or integrate records from multiple facilities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a health information exchange system that acts as an intermediary between different healthcare facilities and practitioners. This mediator enables record sharing and integration without requiring direct connections between all facilities, thus improving accessibility while managing system complexity through a centralized coordination layer.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements universal patient identifiers and standardized data exchange protocols that work across multiple healthcare facilities. This multi-functionality allows the same system infrastructure to serve diverse facilities with different record systems, enabling practitioners to access records from any facility through a unified interface.
2Reliability
If unique patient identifiers are assigned by each healthcare facility, then each facility can accurately track its own patients, but practitioners cannot identify or link patient records across different facilities
Solution Approach 1:
The health information exchange system serves as a mediator that receives patient records with facility-specific identifiers, translates them using universal identifier mappings, and delivers them to practitioners. This intermediary process preserves the reliability of local identification while preventing loss of linkage information through centralized coordination and standardized translation protocols.
3Loss of information
If patient records from multiple facilities are accessed, then practitioners can obtain more complete patient information, but the reliability and accuracy of the integrated information becomes difficult to verify
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where patient records are traced back to their source facilities, and metadata about the record provenance, quality metrics, and verification status are maintained. This feedback loop allows practitioners to assess the reliability of integrated information while maintaining completeness, as each record's origin and validation status are tracked and communicated back through the exchange system.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, computing device and computer program product are provided to define a level of assurance in one or more links between patient records that relate to the same person based upon external information. In the context of a method, one or more links are identified between a patient record associated with a person and pre-existing patient records. Each pre-existing patient record has a plurality of demographic attributes associated with a patient. The method identifies one or more links based upon an analysis of the demographic attributes of the person and the respective patients associated with the pre-existing patient records. The method receives external information regarding a relationship between the person and the respective patients associated with the pre-existing patient records or regarding confirmation of an identity of the person. The method also defines a level of assurance in the respective one or more links based upon the external information.