Record Linkage at the CHeReL
All record linkage projects carried out by the CHeReL must have the approval of the owners of the databases and a Human Research Ethics Committee. Once ethical approval is obtained, the CHeReL uses information such as name, date of birth and address to create a linkage key that points to where records for the same person can be found in the different health databases. Information about people’s health does not go to the CHeReL and is not used to create the linkage key, but stays in the original database. Once the linkage is complete, the linkage key is used to create a different project key for each project. The CHeReL provides the owners of each database with a list of records to be provided to the researchers and the project key. The owners of each database can then each provide a project database to the researcher, who links the project databases using the project key.
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