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Article: Record Linkage
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Public Health
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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RECORD LINKAGE
Record linkage is the process of bringing together two or more records relating to the same entity(e.g., person, family, event, community, business, hospital, or geographical area). In 1946, H. L. Dunn of the United States National Bureau of Statistics introduced the term in this way: "Each person in the world creates a Book of Life. This Book starts with birth and ends with death. Record linkage is the name of the process of assembling the pages of this Book into a volume" (Dunn, 1946). Computerized record linkage was first undertaken by the Canadian geneticist Howard Newcombe and his associates in 1959. Newcombe recognized the full implications of extending the ...