Netrics has announced that its Matching Platform™ was deployed by the California Department of Public Health, Genetics Disease Screening Program (GDSP) to provide automated data matching capabilities for its prenatal diagnostic screening program.
California’s state-of the art program, for early detection of birth defects, now includes the Netrics Matching Platform to further minimize the risk for pregnant women of death and major birth abnormalities.
GDSP currently uses contract labs and Prenatal Diagnostic Centers (PDC) throughout the state to test for potential risks during pregnancy. Most test results received from the labs are on hand-written forms, which are then scanned or keyed into the database—inevitably resulting in challenges for GDSP to accurately link the test results to the correct woman and her pregnancy.
In anticipation of the need to link test results from multiple labs and from two trimesters to the same pregnancy, CDPH sought a technology solution that would automate the matching process with the highest accuracy, reducing staffing costs and freeing up personnel to provide better care. After an extensive evaluation process in which multiple technology vendors were invited to the GDSP facility to match data in a test set, the Netrics Matching Platform provided the most accurate matching by successfully identifying 97% of the links in the test data.
“The power of the Netrics Matching Platform lies in its ability to use advanced mathematical modeling to fully automate the matching and linking of inherently imperfect data – representing a quantum leap over conventional technologies,” said Stefanos Damianakis, president and CEO, Netrics. “CDPH is a truly innovative state government agency that has taken real steps toward addressing its data imperfections and improving patient care by deploying the Netrics technology. We believe that expectant mothers across the state will benefit from its forward-thinking endeavors.”
The Netrics Matching Platform accurately identified more than 2.3 million duplicates out of approximately 5.5 million records in the CDPH database. Proceeding cautiously, the Genetic Disease Screening Program merged 1.5 million records. Without the Netrics Matching Platform, manual identification of these duplicates would have been required.
Patients across California have come to rely on the CDPH to provide them with accurate diagnostic services and genetic counseling. It’s critical that CDPH accurately matches all of the test results to correct clients. According to a representative at CDPH: “Netrics now enables CDPH to automatically link test results, which reduces costs, improves efficiency and allows us to provide better quality care.”
