ArticleHeliyon2023
Virtual patient identifier (vPID): Improving patient traceability using anonymized identifiers in Japanese healthcare insurance claims database.
Article in Heliyon, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Enhancing Patient Identification Accuracy in Shared Child Health Records: a Hybrid Approach for the Lao Language Context.Journal of medical systems · 2025Article
- Literature Review of Studies Using the National Database of the Health Insurance Claims of Japan (NDB): Limitations and Strategies in Using the NDB for Research.JMA journal · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objective: Japan's national-level healthcare insurance claims database (NDB) is a collective database that contains the entire information on healthcare services being provided to all citizens. However, existing anonymized identifiers (ID1 and ID2) have a poor capability of tracing patients' claims in the database, hindering longitudinal analyses. This study presents a virtual patient identifier (vPID), which we have developed on top of these existing identifiers, to improve the patient traceability. Methods: vPID is a new composite identifier that intensively consolidates ID1 and ID2 co-occurring in an identical claim to allow to collect claims of each patient even though its ID1 or ID2 may change due to life events or clerical errors. We conducted a verification test with prefecture-level datasets of healthcare insurance claims and enrollee history records, which allowed us to compare vPID with the ground truth, in terms of an identifiability score (indicating a capability of distinguishing a patient's claims from another patient's claims) and a traceability score (indicating a capability of collecting claims of an identical patient). Results: The verification test has clarified that vPID offers significantly higher traceability scores (0.994, Mie; 0.997, Gifu) than ID1 (0.863, Mie; 0.884, Gifu) and ID2 (0.602, Mie; 0.839, Gifu), and comparable (0.996, Mie) and lower (0.979, Gifu) identifiability scores. Discussion: vPID is seemingly useful for a wide spectrum of analytic studies unless they focus on sensitive cases to the design limitation of vPID, such as patients experiencing marriage and job change, simultaneously, and same-sex twin children. Conclusion: vPID successfully improves patient traceability, providing an opportunity for longitudinal analyses that used to be practically impossible for NDB. Further exploration is also necessary, in particular, for mitigating identification errors.
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