1 IN 2
IS TOO MANY

1 in 2 of us will be diagnosed with cancer by age 85.
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Data linkage services

We provide a record linkage service to help researchers and policy makers access linked health data about people with cancer in Victoria.

Data linkage brings information from different sources together about the same person to create a new, richer dataset. Data linkage assists in providing chronological sequences of events leading up to or subsequent to a cancer diagnosis.  It is used at a macro level to inform policy and research into the health and wellbeing of the Victorian population.

Requests for data linkage should be made using the Data Access Form.

Data will be transferred using our secure data transfer platform.

You will be contacted by the Data Linkage Coordinator to obtain details of the linkage request and to discuss the cost associated with provision of this service.

Data format specification

The preferred file format for submission of data is a tab delimited text file. If this is not possible then a .csv file is acceptable.

For linkage work, the complexity of the task is dependent on the completeness and number of identifiable fields to which we will link and the format in which it is provided. Please refer to the VCR linkage guidelines (PDF) for submitting data to assist you in preparing data for linkage.

The data submitted must contain unique person records only i.e. one record per person.

 

If you'd like to know more, you can speak to us directly.

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