ArticleInternational journal of population data science2026
Linking primary care data from clinical practice research datalink to secondary care and other health-related patient data: update and implications.
Article in International journal of population data science, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Being able to accurately link primary and secondary healthcare records is invaluable for public health research. The Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) collects and curates primary care electronic health records from UK GP practices. These data are linked to secondary health data by National Health Service (NHS) England. As of 2020, NHS England introduced the Master Person Service (MPS) method to link data at the person-level. The method was first applied to CPRD data in the November 2024 linked data release. Objectives: This paper provides an overview of the MPS linkage method and its impact on linked CPRD data. Methods: The MPS linkage method searches each set of personal identifiers against records within the Personal Demographics Service and the MPS record bucket. Successful matches are assigned a patient identifier 'Person_ID', which is used to link records between datasets. The number of successfully linked CPRD patients was compared between the MPS and the previous linkage method. The impact of the change in linkage eligibility definition was also examined. Results: There are 7.9 million (CPRD GOLD) and 34.2 million (CPRD Aurum) patient records in the December 2024 primary care builds that are of research quality and were successfully linked to a Person_ID. Compared to the previous linkage method, the proportion of patient records who were defined as eligible to be linked to Hospital Episode Statistics Admitted Patient Care (HES APC) and had data in HES APC increased from 75.7% to 81.0% in CPRD GOLD and from 72.1% to 79.0% in CPRD Aurum. Conclusion: The new linkage eligibility definition is superior to the previous definition, resulting in greater ability to define appropriate denominator populations and to differentiate why some patients do not have linked data. The MPS linkage method offers the potential for CPRD to investigate individuals with duplicate records and practice mergers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.