The Sortal Concept in the Context of Biomedical Record Linkage

Abstract

Biomedical Record Linkage is especially designed for linking data of patients in different data repositories. An important question in this context is whether singling-out is sufficient for identifying a patient, and if not, what is in general required for identification. To provide hints for an answer, we will extend previous works on the concept of identity and extend the sortal concept, stemming from analytical philosophy and upper-level ontologies. A sortal is a concept that is associated with an identity criterion. For example, the concept “set” has the identity criterion “having the same members”. Based on a description of a record linkage setting, we operationalize the sortal concept by providing a distinction between the digital representation of a person (d-sortal) and the person in flesh (b-sortal).