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Case Studies

Privacy preserving linkage (PPRL) has become an important part of the Australian linkage landscape, with our LinXmart software playing a pivotal role in several transformative initiatives.

The Case Studies below highlight how our software led to improved data access for researchers, planners and policymakers:

Lumos

Lumos - Primary Health Care Data​

The New South Wales Ministry of Health has made significant investments in Lumos, a program to link primary care to secondary care data. After an initial evaluation of linkage quality in 2018, it currently links million of general practice patient records on a routine basis from over 800 GP practices using LinXmart software, to a secondary care repository of approximately 50 million records.

References​

Correll P., Feyer A.-M., Phan P.-T., Drake B., Jammal W., Irvine K., et al.(2021)Lumos: a statewide linkage programme in Australia integrating general practice data to guide system redesignIntegrated Healthcare Journal3(1), e000074
WA Gov

Criminal Justice Data​

A whole-of-government data linkage initiative which included linkage of criminal justice datasets. Both courts and corrections data from the Western Australian Criminal Justice system were irreversibly encoded such that the data was no longer classified as personally identifying information. This encrypted data was linked using the LinXmart software to similarly encrypted data from WA Police and from the Department of Health, thus completing a large, whole-of-government data linkage initiative by the Western Australian government known as PeopleWA (previously known as the Social Investment Data Resource). Linked datasets include those from the health sector, housing, education, disability and child protection.

References​

A. Ferrante, T. Eitelhuber, M. Maller, S. Randall, A. Brown, D. Pedrotti, et al.(2020)Cooperation and Innovation in Data Linkage Creates A Linked, Multi-Sectoral Data Repository for Western Australia-The SIDR ProjectInternational Journal of Population Data Science5 (5)
Pathology

Private Pathology Data​

A project investigating chronic kidney disease linked pathology data in Western Australia (WA) from three key private providers along with the WA public provider to state-based hospital, emergency and mortality data. This project used the LinXmart software, with all three pathology providers encoding PII before providing them for linkage. The linkage involved the deduplication and linkage of 30 million pathology encoded PII records to 38 million hospital, emergency and mortality records.

References​

Lim D., Randall S., Robinson S., Thomas E., Williamson J., Chakera A., Napier K., Schwan C., Manuel J., Betts K., Kane C., Boyd J.(2022)Unlocking Potential within Health Systems Using Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: Exploring Chronic Kidney Disease Outcomes through Linked Data ModellingApplied Clinical Informatics13 (4)
NPS

National Prescribing Service (NPS)​

NPS Medicinewise conducted a number of linkages of their data holdings using PPRL. These included:

  • an internal linkage of their data holdings, identifying patients within their dataset who have visited multiple GP practices
  • a linkage to the National Death Index
  • linkage to state-based hospital and emergency data in New South Wales (NSW), performed by the NSW linkage unit
  • linkage to hospital and emergency data, in Victoria performed by the Victorian linkage unit
  • linkage to state-based hospital and emergency data in Western Australia (WA)

Among other things, these collections have been used to enable a key cardiac outcomes project within Victoria.

References​