CURL Extensions – Weaving a Unique Property Reference Number into Address Histories in the Scottish Community Health Index
David Clark · 2024
Read CURL Extensions – Weaving a Unique Property Reference Number into Address Histories in the Scottish Community Health Index by David Clark (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13177913.txt.
Description
David Clark describes a data project that links home addresses to health records across Scotland, in a 2024 paper. The national health service there keeps a register of all patients, and address changes have been logged since 2000. The addresses sit in free text, which makes place-based study hard. A past step tagged most current addresses with a standard property code, and that tag proved useful during COVID-19 work.
Clark's project extends the tagging to 31 million past addresses on file since January 2000. The goal is a match rate of 95 percent across the full history file. New matching methods are being tried to reach that mark. Checks on accuracy across time and place run alongside the build. Clark explains what the linked file can and cannot do when researchers join people and places over long spans.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | David Clark |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 2 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |