OpenSpecimen's Participant Matching and Participant's Data Privacy

[shlfung]

I see OpenSpecimen, when adding a new participant to a CP, would indicate a match if another participant with an identical LastName + DOB or MRN or UID already exist in the database.

The view would display the matched participant’s name, uid, dob…etc. to the user

I am just wondering if there is a risk this would expose a participant’s identifiers to a user that is not supposed to have access to certain participant 's data? Has this been a concern other sites that are using Openspecimen?

[srikanth_adiga]

@shlfung This is how the default matching algorithm works. However, it can be customized as per local needs by implementing a new matching algorithm within a plugoin.

The current algo tries to minimize that chance of duplicate patients in the database. That is why it displays all matches. If you not, the chances of having duplicate participant increases.

~Sri