What is Privacy Preserving Record Linkage? 

Privacy Preserving Record Linkage (PPRL) is a process of matching records containing personal identifiable information (PII) across organizations without a shared, unique identifier. It often requires those organizations to exchange information with each other or a third party to participate in a matching process. Matching occurs by comparing shared PII to see if there are similarities in demographic attributes such as name, sex, date of birth, or address. PPRL is an alternative set of techniques to solve the issue of identifying matching without exchanging PII directly. PPRL takes place through a series of prescribed steps that makes it nearly impossible for an outside party to recover the PII, but still allows for the establishing of links across organizations.⁶

Why use PPRL?

PPRL is used to link an individual’s data across different organizations and sectors without directly exchanging PII. PPRL can link an individual’s health information across clinical and community organizations to provide a more holistic view of a person’s or household’s health. Using PPRL minimizes the security risks in sharing or transmitting sensitive data.⁷

Who should use PPRL?

Organizations looking to share data and link data where PII is not shared should use PPRL. The guidance in this toolbox should be used by technical staff of organizations implementing a PPRL process. Other organizational staff concerned with information security and privacy may also want to understand PPRL. In addition, researchers may also be interested.

Individuals and organizations in the following roles should use growthcleanr:

Growthcleanr might also be used by the role of:

Description of PPRL tools

This PPRL toolkit contains the software packages that data owners use to extract and garble their data (“Data Owner Tools”) and that the linkage agent uses to match the hashed data to create shared individual and household identifiers (“Linkage Agent Tools”). The PPRL Implementation Guide explains how the PPRL process works, including specific steps of the process and how data flows between the different partners in the CODI network.  

PPRL toolkit

• • PPRL Overview  This section of tools includes an overview and introduction to PPRL, a review of CODI roles and the PPRL Process Flow for the Data Owner. 
  • PPRL Implementation Guide This PDF implementation guide explains how to perform the CODI PPRL process and provides a comprehensive introduction to PPRL and explains in detail how the Data Owner Tools work. 
  • Data Owner Tools These tools are a software package specifically for use by CODI Data Owners and Data Partners to garble their data, which is then sent to a Linkage Agent—a third-party organization that links the hashes. It includes the details on the PPRL process from installation to extraction to garbling to mapping LinkIDs to Patient IDs. 
  • Linkage Agent Tools A set of tools for the CODI Linkage Agent to use to accept garbled input from data owners/partners, perform matching and generate individual and household linkage identifiers. 

• Additional documentation about PPRL

• • CODI PPRL Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHOmBV4js_E