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

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 recor

SUBMITTER: Rentsch CT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5841575 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature