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How resource matching works - AWS HealthLake

How resource matching works

Whenever a resource is written to your data store – through a bulk import job or a REST API create, update or delete, resource matching evaluates its identifier values against the other resources of the same type in the data store. Matching is deterministic: two resources are linked when they share a high-confidence healthcare identifier, and each identifier is matched according to its real-world scope.

  • Globally unique identifiers – an identifier such as a National Provider Identifier (NPI) or Social Security Number (SSN) refers to the same entity regardless of which system issued the record. These are matched on value.

  • Scoped identifiers – an identifier such as a medical record number (MRN), driver's license, or device serial number is only unique within a namespace (a hospital, a state, a manufacturer). These are matched on the combination of the identifying system and value, so that MRN 456 at one hospital is never linked to MRN 456 at another.

Resource matching also recognizes when the same identifier is represented under different system URIs. For example, an SSN under http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/us-ssn and under urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.4.1 are treated as the same identifier, so resources from sources that use different URI conventions still match.

Resource matching does not apply priority ordering or conflict resolution between identifiers: any shared, non-placeholder identifier is enough to link two resources. Because matching is non-destructive, you review the resulting links and decide how to act on them.

Note

Resource matching evaluates resources of the same type against one another (for example, Patient to Patient). It does not link resources of different types.

Note

A resource sharing an identifier with more than 100 other resources may not be matched against all of them.