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released: 31 Oct 2002

This paper discusses some of the issues for health and statistical data set management raised by proposals for the introduction of unique patient identifiers (UPIs). The discussion covers UPIs with and without explicitly identifying details such as names and addresses.

ISSN 1447 5766; Cat. no. HWI 39; 12pp.; FREE

  • Publication

Issue for the Use of Unique Patient Identifiers in Statistical Collections

Full publication (601K PDF)

  • Contents
    • Introduction (559K PDF)
    • Background
    • Privacy issues (503K PDF)
      • Principles for use of identified records
      • Principles for use of records containing statistical linkage keys
      • Principles for the use of unique patient identifiers
      • Principles for the use of encrypted unique patient identifiers
    • Appendix A (483K PDF)
      • Guidelines for the use of unique patient identifiers for data linkage
      • Minimisation of potentially identifying information
      • Supervision of the use of data
      • Data editing
      • Subsequent use and destruction of data sets 10
    • Appendix B (444K PDF)
      • Model for cross-jurisdictional data linkage for medical research
      • Proposed approach
      • Linkage key file
      • Linked de-identified data
      • Ethics approval

Recommended citation

National Health Information Management Group & AIHW 2002. Issues for the use of unique patient identifiers in statistical collections. Cat. no. HWI 39. Canberra: AIHW.