The missing link: Electronic health record linkage across species offers opportunities for improving One Health
Discuss this preprint
Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?Listed in
This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
Objective
Significant opportunities for understanding the co-occurrence of conditions across species in coincident households remain untapped. We determined the feasibility of creating a Companion Care Registry (CCR) for analysis of health data from the University of Colorado Health (UCHealth) patients and their companion animals who received veterinary care at the geographically-adjacent Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital (CSU-VTH).
Materials and Methods
Using a hybrid deterministic and probabilistic record linkage method, non-medical Personally Identifiable Information was securely matched to determine the total number of UCHealth patients within the HIPAA-compliant Health Data Compass Research Data Warehouse (2015-2024) who took a companion animal to the CSU-VTH (2019-2024).
Results
12,115 matches were identified, indicating 29% of CSU-VTH clients were UCHealth patients.
Discussion
The overlap between CSU-VTH clients and UCHealth patients underscores the potential feasibility and utility of a CCR.
Conclusion
This work provides a mechanism to evaluate environmental and inter-species influences on One Health.
