Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).

Objectives In Spring 2020, Public Health Scotland (PHS) were tasked with seeding the NHS Scotland Community Health Index (CHI) with a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). This was to allow understanding of the impact on people residing with someone infected with COVID-19, but utility goes much f...

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Main Authors: David Clark, Chris Dibben
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Swansea University 2022-08-01
Series:International Journal of Population Data Science
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ijpds.org/article/view/1946
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author David Clark
Chris Dibben
author_facet David Clark
Chris Dibben
author_sort David Clark
collection DOAJ
description Objectives In Spring 2020, Public Health Scotland (PHS) were tasked with seeding the NHS Scotland Community Health Index (CHI) with a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). This was to allow understanding of the impact on people residing with someone infected with COVID-19, but utility goes much further than this. Approach Address fields were extracted from CHI records (August 2020) of persons still alive in Scotland or who died since January 2020. Some pre-formatting was carried out on unique address strings that were then processed at DataHub, a service, provided by the Improvement Service, helping public sector organisations secure access to a data matching service. Files were returned with a best matching UPRN attached, and a category indicating the quality of the match. To enhance the seeding of care homes addresses, unmatched CHI records were manually searched, and UPRN added where expert knowledge determined it was a care home address. Results There were 3,208,951 unique address strings processed, relating to 5,828,951 CHI registrations, including people deceased since January 2020. In total, 5,207,389 (89.3%) people had a UPRN returned with match categories EXCELLENT (78.8%), GOOD (8.3%), or FAIR (2.2%). Only 60% of the 40,196 current CHI records that were pre-indicated with an institutional care home flag could be automatically matched to a UPRN. Following the manual expert review, 42,334 people in adult care homes could be identified with a specific UPRN. A random sample of 1,724 address pairs, stratified by match category and urban-rural category, was selected for quality assurance review by an independent checker. Results have still to be verified, but precision is estimated to be more than 95% of matches to the correct UPRN. Conclusion The creation of the CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL) is a major development to CHI as a data linkage tool in Scotland. CHI has long been used as a population spine for patient-level data linkage in research projects but introducing a property-level dimension through CURL provides new opportunities for researchers.
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spelling doaj.art-b028f0333cf0404ba731720680d739ac2023-12-03T05:02:31ZengSwansea UniversityInternational Journal of Population Data Science2399-49082022-08-017310.23889/ijpds.v7i3.1946Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).David Clark0Chris Dibben1Public Health ScotlandUniversity of EdinburghObjectives In Spring 2020, Public Health Scotland (PHS) were tasked with seeding the NHS Scotland Community Health Index (CHI) with a Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). This was to allow understanding of the impact on people residing with someone infected with COVID-19, but utility goes much further than this. Approach Address fields were extracted from CHI records (August 2020) of persons still alive in Scotland or who died since January 2020. Some pre-formatting was carried out on unique address strings that were then processed at DataHub, a service, provided by the Improvement Service, helping public sector organisations secure access to a data matching service. Files were returned with a best matching UPRN attached, and a category indicating the quality of the match. To enhance the seeding of care homes addresses, unmatched CHI records were manually searched, and UPRN added where expert knowledge determined it was a care home address. Results There were 3,208,951 unique address strings processed, relating to 5,828,951 CHI registrations, including people deceased since January 2020. In total, 5,207,389 (89.3%) people had a UPRN returned with match categories EXCELLENT (78.8%), GOOD (8.3%), or FAIR (2.2%). Only 60% of the 40,196 current CHI records that were pre-indicated with an institutional care home flag could be automatically matched to a UPRN. Following the manual expert review, 42,334 people in adult care homes could be identified with a specific UPRN. A random sample of 1,724 address pairs, stratified by match category and urban-rural category, was selected for quality assurance review by an independent checker. Results have still to be verified, but precision is estimated to be more than 95% of matches to the correct UPRN. Conclusion The creation of the CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL) is a major development to CHI as a data linkage tool in Scotland. CHI has long been used as a population spine for patient-level data linkage in research projects but introducing a property-level dimension through CURL provides new opportunities for researchers. https://ijpds.org/article/view/1946Address MatchingLinkage QualityUnique Property Reference Number
spellingShingle David Clark
Chris Dibben
Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
International Journal of Population Data Science
Address Matching
Linkage Quality
Unique Property Reference Number
title Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
title_full Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
title_fullStr Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
title_full_unstemmed Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
title_short Adding a Residential Dimension to the Scottish Population Spine – CHI-UPRN Residential Linkage (CURL).
title_sort adding a residential dimension to the scottish population spine chi uprn residential linkage curl
topic Address Matching
Linkage Quality
Unique Property Reference Number
url https://ijpds.org/article/view/1946
work_keys_str_mv AT davidclark addingaresidentialdimensiontothescottishpopulationspinechiuprnresidentiallinkagecurl
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