The record model, master patient index, identity resolution, and merge reversibility.
3 questions in Healthcare & Life Sciences.
Patient matching across healthcare systems uses deterministic rules, probabilistic linkage and human review to connect records without a shared identifier. Blocking, thresholding and reversible links matter because false merges are clinically riskier than false splits. It also connects record linkage to the point an interviewer is testing.
Not as one field. Administrative sex, recorded sex at birth, gender identity, name and pronouns to use, and the sex parameter a clinical calculation needs are separate elements with separate provenance and separate consumers, and each has to be able to change without rewriting the others.
Containment first, because clinical decisions are being made on a chart holding two people's data. Then separate the merge itself from everything it caused - the notifications sent onwards, the orders, results and doses now attributed to the wrong person - and treat unmerge as a clinical exercise with human adjudication.