Identity Resolution Daily

[Post from Infoglide] Reference Linking Methods - Part 3

“This is the third in a series of four posts that discuss four methods for linking references.  These methods are:

1. Direct matching
2. Transitive linking
3. Linking by association
4. Asserted Linking

In the last post I discussed transitive linking, and why it is essential for producing a unique and deterministic outcome of an ER process.  In this post I will discuss the third method, linking by association.”

BeyeNETWORK: Computed Attributes, Entity Resolution and Connectivity Hierarchies

“There are many types of relationships that are discovered as a by-product of entity resolution, such as households or families. These terms take on different meaning depending on the subject area and the business situation. For example, we can examine parent-child and sibling relationships associated with individuals, we can look at components such as paper clips or screws that are in the same ‘family,’ or we can look at corporate ownership relationships that reflect families of companies. Alternatively, we can look at other types of relationships – individuals belonging to the same health club, components manufactured from the same type of metal, or companies that share the same board members.”

WTVM: Phenix City doctor accused of multi-million dollar Medicare fraud

“In an 80-page  civil complaint, the United States Attorney’s Office claims 51-year-old Doctor Robert Ritchea, a physician, not only allowed an unlicensed medical assistant to inject patients with pain medications, but also improperly billed Medicare for the treatments. The complaint also alleges Ritchea over-billed Medicare by more than $2.2 million in over 4,300 separate claims over a period of four years.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Location, Location, Location

“If you know that 123 Main Street in Anytown is a single family house there is a high probability that this is the same real world individual. But if you know that 123 Main Street in Anytown is a building used as a nursing home, a campus or that this entrance has many apartments or other kind of units, then it is not so certain that these records represents the same real world individual (not at least if the name is John Smith). So this example highlights the importance of using external reference data in data matching.”

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[Post from Infoglide] The Talk of the ACFE Conference

“The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) held its annual conference and exhibition in Washington, DC this week.  Through the keynote address and the plethora of wonderful speakers, one message became loud and clear - fraudsters are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to circumvent your policies…”

A Software Insider’s Point of View: Research Report: Rethink Your Next Generation Business Intelligence Strategy

“A confluence of changing business requirements and on-going vendor consolidation leads many organizations to rethink their business intelligence (BI) strategies… Ensure the systems supports multi-channel heterogeneous data sources.  Do not stay dependent on ERP systems for primary sources of data.  Expect a rapidly changing business environment that rewards flexibility.”

Center for Investigative Reporting: Ex-cop says makers of data-mining software must recognize intel rules

“The idea is for police in your area to better share essential information about possible criminal and terrorist threats with their federal counterparts, poor communication being one of the reasons why the terrorist hijackings were allowed to occur in the first place. Civil libertarians have repeatedly expressed concern that the centers are stockpiling too much personal data about Americans who haven’t committed a crime in the hope that some piece of it can be ‘fused’ with another to unravel a terrorist plot. Serrao and his colleagues counter that organizations like the ACLU ‘have no clue’ what’s actually being collected and analyzed at fusion centers.”

Visible IT: Numbers, Names, and User IDs

“Patrick rightly notes that, by definition, how a person spells his name is the correct way to spell it and by definition does not have ‘invalid characters’. It’s perhaps more correct to say that the computer system can’t handle the way a person represents their name. There are extreme cases of course such as TAFKAP and Wolfe+585, where people deliberately try to sabotage Our Modern World with unpronounceable or uncontainable names. But sometimes even the most benign names can cause computer systems fits.”

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By the Infoglide Team

CNSNews.com: New Regulations Outline Content, Transmission Standards for Every Americans’ Electronic Health Records

“The EHRs are designed to be digital replications of the hard-copy, paper health records commonly in use today. They are also engineered to be easily transferable among different doctors and hospitals so as to eliminate the creation of duplicate or disparate records among different health care providers, thus allowing any health care office to access a patient’s complete medical record at each visit.”

Washington Post: Firms slow to embrace cloud computing

“‘There’s an awful lot of talk about it and there is consumption of cloud,’ said Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC. But ‘organizations don’t simply make change because they can. There has to be good justification.’ Harry Weller, a general partner at New Enterprise Associates, said start-ups and new businesses will likely be among the first to move to the cloud. A need to hold down costs is often an overriding factor in their decision, he said.”

Detroit Free Press: Arrests made for Medicare fraud

“Many of the charges involved home health care companies that billed Medicare for equipment or treatment that many patients didn’t need or never received. In several cases, people who worked for the companies were paid to recruit patients to participate in the scheme. Some persuaded elderly people to sell their Medicare identification numbers, which were used to rip off the system.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Data Quality is an Ingredient, not an Entrée

“Fortunately it is more and more recognized that you don’t get success with Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, Master Data Management, Service Oriented Architecture and many more disciplines without starting with improving your data quality. But it will be a big mistake to see Data Quality improvement as an entrée before the main course being BI, CRM, MDM, SOA or whatever is on the menu.”

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By the Infoglide Team

ITBusinessEdge: TIBCO Makes MDM Move, but Where Is Oracle?

“There are still options, Karel writes, including S3 Matching Technologies, Syslore or identity resolution/matching vendor Infoglide Software. But if Oracle plans to just use its own matching engine from the Oracle Customer Hub in Oracle Universal Content Management – ‘that would be a step backwards in my opinion,’ he writes.”

The Austin Chronicle: Drug Trafficking Gets Intense?

“But both FBI Agent Royce Curtain and the DPS’ Tom Ruocco said that communication among law enforcement agencies in the area is good – and, said Ruocco, the addition of a local Austin Regional Intelligence Center (a.k.a. a ‘fusion center‘) would be an asset to getting information needed to detect if there is an increase in local drug trafficking activity. Getting involved in the fusion center is ‘proactive on the city’s part,’ said Ruocco. When there are trends ‘coming forward’ the city will be in a ‘better position to react.’”

Insurance Journal: Kentucky Coal Mine Operator Charged with Workers’ Compensation Fraud

“The indictment alleged that between May 2004 and May 2005, Allen underreported monthly payroll and the number of miners working for her to Kentucky Employers Mutual Insurance. She did this by creating a sham trucking company and placing many of her mining employees on that payroll.”

Liliendahl on Data Quality: Breaking through an open door

“Why are some people always reminding us that this and that must be seen in a business context? Of course everything we do in our professional life within data quality, master data management, business intelligence and so on must be seen in a business context.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Healthcare Identity Resolution Confusion

“Confusion about medical records can lead to chaos. We’ve all heard horror stories about hospital tragedies caused by misidentification of a patient, such as applying an unnecessary surgery. It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of correct, unambiguous information in the practice of medicine. Knowing as much as possible about a patient enables a practitioner to reach a correct diagnosis and the proper treatment regimen in the least amount of time.”

NewsandSentinel.com: Local officials do their part to fight terrorism

“Tom Campbell, a consultant on terrorist issues who has worked with Sandy in the past, has been in the field of counter-terrorism for 14 years. We do not profile based on ethnicity and race, what we do is profile behavior,” said Campbell. “Terrorism is evolutionary. Terrorists are always changing their behavior, appearances and tactics. What we try to do to prevent terrorism is focus on the behavior. That’s how we disrupt it before it happens. The emphasis is on prevention.”

intelligent enterprise: Predicting BI Highlights for 2010

“Cloud computing and SaaS will become less niche as both BI heavy weights and vertically-focused vendors recognize that the infrastructure side of BI offers little competitive advantage; instead, it’s the time-to-value and agility. IT owners who don’t want to give up any control are in for a bruising.”

ISRIA: Testimony of Secretary Napolitano before the Senate Committee on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Intelligence Reform: The Lessons and Implications of the Christmas Day Attack”

“DHS uses TSDB data, managed by the Terrorist Screening Center that is administered by the FBI, to determine who may board, who requires further screening and investigation, who should not be admitted, or who should be referred to appropriate law enforcement personnel. Specifically, to help make these determinations, DHS uses the No-Fly List and the Selectee List, two important subsets within the TSDB. Individuals on the No-Fly List should not receive a boarding pass for a flight to, from, over, or within the United States.”

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[Post from Infoglide] Data Fatigue

“Four years ago this week, a small aircraft lifted off from Watson Island in Miami. It was the plane’s 39,743rd flight. And as the tiny craft first vented white smoke and then lost its right wing in an explosion, it became clear that this was its last. All twenty people in the Grumman G73-T, including three infants, perished. The National Transportation Safety Board later determined that the culprit was metal fatigue.”

ovum: BI, EPM and EDW trends to watch out for in 2010

“For the mid-market and those new to BI, open source and BI software as a service (SaaS) will offer attractive alternatives. In the case of BI SaaS, increasing deployments of enterprise applications in the cloud by SMEs will act as a further driver for take-up of this option.”

destinationCRM.com: Electronic Health Records Get a Check-Up

“Hildreth references a 2009 New England Journal of Medicine survey indicating that close to 4 percent of physicians have a fully functional EHR system. About 13 percent of physicians’ offices have a basic EHR system in the works. Many organizations, Hildreth says, currently have bits and pieces of EHR, but not the full thing.”

insurancenewsnet.com: Hard-up Investigators Battle Against Rise In Comp Fraud

“While prosecution of various forms of insurance fraud is affected by budget constraints, the prosecution of underreporting of workers comp premiums by unscrupulous employers, or their outright failure to purchase the mandated coverage, may take the biggest hit, depending on each state’s priorities, Mr. Jay said.”

intelligent enterprise: Survey: BI Still Hindered By Technical Problems

“Specifically, the 2009 survey found that 29% of BI deployments were slightly successful and 47% were moderately successful. Only 21% of the respondents rated their deployments very successful.’A number of technical factors continue to contribute to — or hinder — stronger BI impact,’ the report said. ‘Data quality, reliability of the BI system and access to relevant data are the most important technical factors.’”

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[Post from Infoglide] Fusion Centers: Enthusiasm and Apprehension

“Identity resolution is a vital technology for law enforcement fusion centers, and we’ve often followed developments with links to stories in this area. When overlapping and adjacent jurisdictions share data with each other, uncovering hidden identities and linkages greatly accelerates the detection of criminal activity. This map shows current and planned deployments of state and local fusion centers.”

dataqualityPRO: Data Quality Blog Roundup - November 2009 Edition

“These three posts formed an excellent blogging debate between Jim Harris, Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen and Charles Blyth on the subject of Single Version of the Truth, a common term in our profession - but what exactly does it mean?”

USAToday: Opposing view: Program keeps fliers safe

“Initially, the Secure Flight program was part of a larger debate about how to identify terrorists consistently while maintaining the privacy of fliers in the post-9/11 world. Once watch list matching was determined to be the correct mechanism, TSA designed the program with privacy and security embedded into its foundation. Secure Flight now uses advanced watch list matching technology and has taken the time to get it right.”

The EHR Effect: 8 Health Stocks Set to Benefit in 2010

“In addition, with some EMR/EHR providers offering as Software As A Service solution (SaaS), the initial fears of implementation costs and backup/disaster recovery planning can be significantly decreased. These SaaS providers have already worked through those issues, and through a web interface, can offer full functionality.”

Business Intelligence News: Master Data Management: Building a Foundation for Success

“Complexity occurs when the subject details being mastered have more variables, and variables that can be vague—such as a person. In the instances of complex subject areas, mastering the reference value requires more sophisticated analysis [i.e. identity resolution] of the numerous attributes associated with the individual reference value such as their name or address.”

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Technology writer Chris Calnan’s story opened with a comment about Infoglide that nicely sums up the evolution of the broader market for identity resolution and entity analytics: “The market may have finally caught up with Infoglide Software Corp.’s technology.”

While identity resolution technology has evolved rapidly over the past decade, its market visibility only emerged fairly recently. It was barely two years ago in mid-2007 when Gartner analyst Mark Beyer dubbed it “entity resolution and analysis” and pointed out that it “was previously an obscure, but gradually developing, technology that has come to the forefront as a result of world events and market forces.” Gartner singled it out as an “On the Rise” technology within operational business intelligence.

That first Gartner “hype cycle” showed entity resolution and analysis entering at the earliest stage. A year later in mid-2008, a broader report on data management  depicted it significantly higher on the curve in the opinion of the Gartner analyst team. In both reports, its estimated time to “mainstream adoption” was 2-5 years, the second fastest category.

At the end of 2008, noted consultant and speaker Jill Dyché of Baseline Consulting issued her predictions for 2009. Along with predictions about SaaS, data governance, BI, and MDM, she said that “Identity Resolution will get its due.” Rob Karel of Forrester had written several months before about Informatica’s acquisition of one of the two closest Infoglide competitors (IBM EAS being the other one). Identity Systems was acquired from Nokia for $85 million.

As we progressed further into 2009, the most meaningful indicator of identity resolution’s growing importance surfaced: an escalating identification with the space by other companies. IBM, Infoglide, and Informatica were joined by Initiate Systems, Intelligent Search, and Netrics, each of whom began incorporating messaging around identity and entity resolution.

For our customers and for us, this is all good news.  Our evolving space becoming better known and more highly valued will provide more alternatives for customers while increasing our own visibility. The future of identity resolution looks bright, and we all win.

[Distributed earlier this week in our quarterly publication, Identity Resolution Quarterly]

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By the Infoglide Team

Come by and see us at TDWI World in Orlando Nov. 3 & 4, Booth 405

The Emculturated World: Unmanage Master Data Management

“MDM breaks down in the moment it becomes divorced from a practical, immediate attempt to capture just what is needed today. The moment it attempts to “bank” standard symbols ahead of their usage, the MDM process becomes speculative, and proscriptive.”

Governing: Can I Say No to an Electronic Health Record?

“In some instances, patients don’t even know their information is being shared. For example, if consumers turn over prescription drug records when applying for life insurance, the insurer will sometimes hand off the information to business partners who then hand it off to data miners. To keep a tighter grip on privacy, Deven McGraw, director of health privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, would like a set of rules that all organizations in the health IT world would have to follow.”

Related post: “Applying Identity Resolution to Patient Identification Integrity”

San Antonio Express-News: McManus recalls 9-11 at GEOINT summit

“Bart Johnson, acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis with the Homeland Security Department, said cooperation is improving, although problems remain with security clearances and interdepartmental connectivity. ‘The federal government can only do so much in getting it down to the street level,’ Johnson said. Homeland security and Justice Department officials have formed 72 “fusion centers” — terrorism prevention and response centers where federal agencies work with the military, local law enforcement and private partners. Three are in Texas: Austin, Dallas and Collin County near Dallas.”

information management: From Search to Explore

“It’s no surprise that people are looking at more and more internal and external resources for informed decision-making. In the internal case, data integration is a foundation of master data management as well. But integration for BI to common visual tools is increasingly taking place in subsystems, relational databases and cubes, and the visualization layer itself.”

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By the Infoglide Team

CRMBuyer: The BI Outlook: A Bright Spot of Growth in a Gloomy Economy

“Investing in business intelligence is important for a company now more than ever, agreed Bill Barberg, president of Insightformation and an expert in Balanced Scorecard methodology. Sound business intelligence helps companies make fact-based decisions as they try to navigate in today’s stormy economy, he told CRM Buyer. “Business intelligence can help companies make much better decisions,’ he said.”

OCDQ Blog: Adventures in Data Profiling (Part 3)

“In Part 3, you will continue your adventures by using a combination of field values and field formats to begin your analysis of the following fields: Birth Date, Telephone Number and E-mail Address.”

SearchSOA.com: SOA with MDM prevents messaging confusion

“Increasingly, organizations are designing SOA into the MDM architecture from the beginning, says Dan Power, president and founder of consulting firm Hub Solution Designs Inc. in Hingham, Mass. This creates challenges in meshing the real-time realities with the need to keep the data accurate.”

iHealthBeat: Privacy and Security: Experts Focus on Legal Issues Surrounding EHR Use at AHIMA Summit

“Linda Kloss, AHIMA CEO, said many vendors have not focused on developing legally defensible EHR systems. In addition, health care providers have not created a demand for such functionality.”

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