" `Soundex' codes of surnames provide confidentiality and accuracy in a national HIV database", JY Mortimer, JA Salathiel, Communicable Disease Report v 5 no 12 (10 Nov 1995) pp R183--R186  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....to go through their GP. As a result, officials suspected that the 18,000 registered sufferers represented only about 12,000 actual patients, and wanted to know if budgets could be cut. A form was sent out to all GPs and genitourinary clinics demanding details of all patients receiving treatment [46]. In addition to clinical information, this demanded that the patient be identified by date of birth, postcode and the Soundex code of their surname 1 ; the instructions for generating a Soundex code have the curious final line Note: it is very helpful if you can give the initial of the first ....

" `Soundex' codes of surnames provide confidentiality and accuracy in a national HIV database", JY Mortimer, JA Salathiel, Communicable Disease Report v 5 no 12 (10 Nov 1995) pp R183--R186

....as often happens for research or census purposes. The problem is that the process is often incompetently designed; for example, a recent survey of HIV and AIDS proposed that patients names be replaced by Soundex codes of their surnames, and accompanied by their birth dates and postcodes [MS95]. This is clearly inadequate. Britain has established guidelines which state that no patient should be identifiable, other than to the general practitioner, from any data sent to an external organisation without the informed consent of the patient [JCG88] This topic has been researched ....

" `Soundex' codes of surnames provide confidentiality and accuracy in a national HIV database", JY Mortimer, JA Salathiel, Communicable Disease Report v 5 no 12 (10 Nov 1995) pp R183--R186

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