Anonymous Record Linkage Between EPR and CDW-H: Toward Development of a Federated Genotype-Phenotype System

Environmental Polymorphisms Registry (EPR) is a large-scale phenotype-by-genotype registry developed by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to facilitate translational research. The link between personal identity and collected genomic data was preserved in EPR which creates opportunities for EPR to be linked to phenotype-rich databases, such as the Carolina Data Warehouse for Health (CDW-H) located at the University of North Carolina hospital system. CDW-H contains clinically-relevant data for patients who have been admitted to UNC healthcare system. To validate the feasibility of linking EPR with CDWH, the number of matching records between the two databases had to be established. To that end, combinations of subjects’ demographic identifiers from both databases were converted to anonymized hash codes, which were then matched to determine the number of overlapping records. Preliminary results showed that combination of last name, gender, data of birth and zip code would generate over 2,700 matches between the two databases.