Frequently Asked Questions

1. What research areas does the ePBRN focus on?

The ePBRN's primary focus is on clinical and health services research. We achieve this by extracting and linking routinely collected data from 18 participating General Practices(GP) and local health services located in South Western Sydney.

2. What is the key strength of the 2012-2019 ePBRN Linked Dataset?

The dataset's strength lies in its capacity to link primary care records to hospital data through a probabilistic linkage approach, resulting in a unified and coherent data.

3. What type of information is included in the ePBRN SWSLHD Linked Dataset?

The dataset encompasses patient demographics, medication histories, documented medical conditions, and detailed visit records from both general practices and hospitals.

4. How has patient privacy been addressed in the dataset?

The electronic health records in the dataset have undergone rigorous anonymization processes to ensure the protection of patient identities and privacy.

5. Can you elaborate on the database linkage process?

The database linkage is performed using the GRHANITE extraction and linkage tool version 2.2. For additional information, please refer to the following resources:
A practical evaluation of a probabilistic linkage tool for integrating electronic health records from general practice and secondary care settings:

6. How many linked GP patients are included in the dataset?

7. Is ethics approval required to access the data? And what is the typical timeframe for approval?

Yes, obtaining ethics approval is mandatory before accessing the data. The approval process typically takes up to 2-3 weeks, although this timeframe may vary depending on the specifics of your project. For further details on the ethics approval process, please refer to the SREDH Consortium Governance documents.