What is Auto-Steward?

  • Auto-Steward
  • Patient

Verato Auto-Steward is designed to answer the question “Do these two sets of identity data actually represent the same person?” It is a plugin that boosts the integrity of data in an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR), Enterprise Master Patient index (EMPI), Master Data Management (MDM) system, or Customer Data Platform (CDP) to improve matching, automatically resolve duplicate records, and proactively prevent new duplicates from occurring.

How Auto-Steward is used

Organizations commonly use Auto-Steward to improve the matching performance of a current MPI or MDM system, have a backlog of data stewardship tasks awaiting manual resolution, or are merging or acquiring IT systems (leading to an influx of new identities).

  1. Receives two sets of identity data as inputs.
  2. Uses Verato’s proprietary referential matching to determine if the two sets of identity data represent the same person
  3. Responds with an indication whether the two identities represent the same person, as well as appropriate supporting evidence from Verato’s comprehensive reference database of US-based identities.

How does Auto-Steward compare identities?

Verato compares customer identity records to Verato’s Reference Database of US identities—a comprehensive, authoritative reference database of US identities with over 300 million identities. When a pair match request is received by Verato Auto-Steward, each input identity is compared against Verato’s Reference Database to determine if there is a matching reference identity.

  • If the input identity matches a reference identity at a score of .8 or higher, this is considered a referential match.
  • If both input identities referentially match to the same Reference Database identity, then the two input identities are considered a referential match to each other and deemed to represent the same individual.
  • If each input identity referentially matches to a different Reference Database identity, then Auto-Steward considers the input identities to be a referential non-match, meaning they represent two different people.

How does Auto-Steward work?

Auto-Steward operates through a SOAP web service. A customer provides two sets of identity data as a request, and then Verato sends a response indicating one of the following:

  • The two sets of identity data are the same person
  • The two sets of identity data are not the same person
  • A match cannot be determined.

Verato's response also includes appropriate supporting evidence and metadata about Auto-Steward's match determination.

Example
You might have two customer records, one for Sally Smith in Chicago, IL and another for Sally Jones in Detroit, MI. Based on that information, the records do not seem to be the same person with a high degree of confidence. But the Reference Database is aware of the longitudinal history of Sally’s information — so the Reference Database knows that Sally Smith changed her last name to Jones, moved to Detroit, and the two records represent the same person.

Who uses Auto-Steward?

Verato Auto-Steward is ideal for organizations with existing Master Data Management (MDM) or Master Patient Index (MPI) software that generates a large volume of potential duplicates for manual review by a data steward.

How do I use Auto-Steward?

Organizations typically access Auto-Steward via one of the following methods:

  • Batch process: Through a Verato-managed batch process in which the customer provides possible duplicates in a pipe-delimited ASCII file
  • SOAP Web Service: Through an interactive SOAP Web service that may be seamlessly integrated within an existing data stewardship process.
The SOAP Web service is the primary method organizations use to send stewardship tasks directly to Verato AUTO-STEWARD. Using the highly scalable Web service, organizations gain real-time match decisions without the manual review.