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hikari-kaitou · 3 years

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Capcom's Official AA Fanclub Surveys - DGS Edition

Many Western fans may be familiar with the Turnabout 4koma comics that get posted on the official AA fanclub site that Capcom runs, thanks to some lovely fans on tumblr and elsewhere who have shared their translations. What fewer people seem to know about is the character surveys.

Back in the old days, they used to hold a survey on Capcom's official AA fansite every few months where they'd write about the seasonal activities of a handful of characters and ask fans to vote for the funniest/most pleasant/strangest/etc answer.

They stopped doing them in like... 2016? 2017? The original text is lost for good as far as I can tell. Even the wayback machine couldn't help because the content was password locked and you can't get past the password wall while remaining in the archived version.

Fortunately, I saved some of my translations of them so I thought I’d share them.

Cut for length...

"February has begun, and the DGS cast is nearing the end of their journey aboard the RFS Alacrei. Which of them acted the most strangely?"

Ryuunosuke ~ Exhausted from his intensive study session, he decided to try some katana swinging practice as a change of pace and to combat his recent lack of exercise. But because he wasn't used to handling the katana, he swung it too hard and it went flying out of his hands and got stuck in the wall right next to Sherlock, who had just entered the room. Sherlock asked him, "aren't you supposed to be studying right now, Mr. Naruhodo?" and handcuffed him to his desk.

Susato- worked on developing a curriculum for Ryuunosuke. 'If we keep going at this pace, he won't be able to learn it all in time... It'll be hard on Naruhodo-sama, but we'll have to work hard through a couple of nights together.' With that thought, she created a harsh study schedule, and almost seemed to be looking forward to it for some reason.

Sherlock- Driven by excitement over the thought of returning to England after a long absence, he went up on deck to stare at the ocean. Being February, it was very cold out there and he ended up being chilled all the way to the tips of his fingers. He returned to the ship cabins and amused himself by putting his frozen hands on Ryuunosuke, who was stuck in his room studying.

Van Zieks- Upon hearing from Vortex that there was a Japanese exchange student coming to England to study law, he smashed a Lord's Bottle. He apparently also didn't care for the fact that that Japanese student wouldn't be alone, because he proceeded to shatter his chalice, too.

Hosonaga- in order to provide a respite from studying, he provided some hot chocolate. They enjoyed a pleasant tea time, marveling over how sweet and delicious the drink was until Sherlock piped up with some unnecessary trivia: 'Actually folks, chocolate has long been used in Europe as an aphrodisiac!' Everyone promptly spat it out."

"The long winter is nearly over and spring is on it's way, putting the DGS cast members in a celebratory mood. Who found the best way of enjoying spring?"

Ryuunosuke: the Yuumei University faculty members were holding a flower viewing event, and he joined the assistance committee. He exhausted himself keeping the blankets clean so the intense shower of flower petals wouldn't pile up too high on them, delivering sake and snacks, and mediating whatever pointless fights arose. To top it all off, for some reason his compensation was only a single piece of leftover candy. Talk about a sad result!

Susato- her father and the others living in his dormitory were holding the flower viewing event, so she got up early to prepare the bentos. But her father carelessly forgot to tell her that they wanted tea cakes, so she had to go around the house and neighborhood collecting sweets. For some reason, she ended up being able to gather caramels, biscuits, candy sticks, basically everything but tea cakes, for the tea ceremony.

Sherlock- he disguised himself as a beat officer and infiltrated Scotland Yard to have some fun. There was a real beat officer napping on his feet in the spring sunshine, and while observing him, Sherlock ended up falling asleep too. Detective Gregson gave them a good scolding when he found them, but then Sherlock revealed his true identity with a "hey, it's me, folks!" "What the blazes do you think you're doing?!" Gregson shouted, his rage growing even more, and Sherlock ended up making a run for it.

Van Zieks- went to the vineyard to oversee the production of the contents of his Lord's Bottle. As he viewed the still unopened grape blossom buds, he thought about how they would someday grow up to fill his Lord's Bottle, and ended up going around to look at each one. But the farm hands couldn't stop wondering whether the bottle itself or its owner's heel might come flying at them and were quite uneasy.

Asougi: exhausted himself running around since early morning helping with the professors' flower viewing event. When it was over, he took a break, sharing his reward candy stick [the name of the candy literally translates to 1,000 year candy] with Ryuunosuke, who had also been helping out.

"I wonder if the candy's effect is halved if you share it with someone."

"That still gives us 500 years."

They laughed and enjoyed looking at the flowers until dark. Then they parted ways with a handshake and a "see you later, best friend."

(This one was something about celebrating New Years. For some reason I didn't save the original question)

"Ryuunosuke ~ To celebrate New Years, he planned to pound mochi with everyone at the office. He somehow managed to get his hands on some mochi rice and he and Sherlock started pounding. Iris was having such fun watching them that she steamed a whole bunch more mochi rice so they could have some to share, and he and Sherlock spent the whole evening pounding mochi like crazy.

Asougi~ Because it's New Years, he went around to a bunch of shrines. When he drew his new year's fortune, he got a "horrible luck" result. "I'm not worried about it," he claimed, and headed up to the mountains early on New Years morning and work hard on a full training course of purification by water, meditation under a waterfall and wooden sword practice. It seems that he was working really hard to clear his mind of all earthly thoughts

Sherlock- Agreed to help Ryuunosuke pound mochi. As Ryuunosuke was flipping the mochi over, he carelessly dropped his badge into the bowl and Sherlock mixed it in without noticing, so they had to crack open both the hard and soft mochi to look for it. Fortunately they found it in the 4th one they checked, but apparently Sherlock got his hands and face covered in sticky white mochi in the process.

Susato- Wore a furisode and went with her father to do the first shrine visit of the year. The shrine was incredibly crowded and they had to wait in line for a long time, but she brought the Encyclopaedia of British Law and a copy of the Strand Magazine in her sleeves to secretly read as they waited so she actually ended up enjoying the wait.

Van Zieks- Ryuunosuke cheerfully gave him some mochi as a New Year’s (which at that time was celebrated at the same time as the Chinese New Year) gift, which he accepted confusedly, wondering “...Can the Japanese not even keep track of when the New Year is?” Because Ryuunosuke referred to it as a rice cake, he tried to eat it like a regular cake without softening it with heat first. It was so hard that he couldn’t imagine how it could possibly be food, and ended up misunderstanding the Japanese even more!

"Autumn has arrived, and the weather is starting to cool off, which means that everyone is becoming more active. Which character chose the most pleasant autumn activity to keep busy with?"

Iris was making bread but her hands are small and it’s difficult for her to knead the dough, so she asked for Ryuunosuke’s help. She wanted to make enough to hand out to Gina and all the other homeless children in the East End, so she made a massive amount and Ryuunosuke was stuck kneading this massive mountain of bread dough all day. Apparently he became such a expert at kneading that he could be a baker now.

Asougi was practicing with his sword, slicing autumn-colored ginko leaves as they fell from the tree. He cut so many leaves, though, that he ended up making a big mess on the ground, the number of fallen leaves now having increased, and it took him a long time to clean it all up.

Sherlock: Ryuunosuke told him that he was making anpan (bread filled with sweet red bean paste, the bane of my Asian-dwelling existance) and asked Sherlock to help by being in charge of getting the poppy seeds they’d need to sprinkle on top, so Sherlock went out and gathered a ton of poppy seeds. In fact, he got so many of them that no one knew what to do with them all cuz they had a huge amount of leftovers. Sherlock said, “Well, they’re only the size of poppy seeds! Surely you two can deal with them somehow! Ahahaha!” and Iris scolded him.

(I couldn’t capture it in English, but Sherlock’s line contained a pun, and a pretty stupid one at that, so that’s part of why he got scolded)

It’s grape harvesting season, so Van Zieks commutes to the winery regularly to direct the production of the contents for his “Lord’s Bottle.” He demands perfection in everything from the selection of the grapes to the way they’re squeezed, and the winery staff is terrified by the “grim reaper’s” gaze and heel swinging (i.e. the leg thing he does in court) so they grumble as they work.

"Hearing that there’s a holiday in the West called Halloween, the people involved with the court in Japan decided to try it out themselves. Naturally Halloween is a big deal in England as well. So, which member of the DGS cast had the best celebration?"

Team Ryuunosuke and Asougi- Asougi got Naruhodo up on his shoulders and they draped a white sheet over themselves to make a ghost costume. They went out like that, but Naruhodo had such exaggerated reactions to the fear of the people who saw them and to bumping his head on tree branches that they ended up losing their balance and falling on top of each other?!

Sherlock Holmes- went wearing a horse’s head mask. Iris used her skills to make it a fancy horse covered in stars, but the eye holes weren’t well made and he had to wander around blindly. Because of that he tripped hard over a pile of coal! He ended up getting so dirty that the stars on his costume were covered up!

Van Zieks- took inspiration from his nickname and dressed up as the grim reaper. He covered himself up with a skeleton mask and hood figuring no one would know it was him. Unfortunately he got angry when he saw Megundal (McGilded) pass by and started throwing bottles and glasses and ended up giving himself away.

"November has arrived, and autumn is nearing its end. However, the DGS cast is still keeping busy, even on their days off. Which character chose the most interesting way to spend their late autumn day?"

Ryuunosuke- Thinking that he’d better learn more about British culture if he was going to be a defense attorney in Britain, he went down to the East End with Gina for a little observation. However, because an Asian like him stood out so much, he got mobbed by the other children. On top of it all, his arm band got stolen from him and he had to send a replacement request to Yumei University on the other side of the ocean.

Asougi- He went for a meal at La Quantas. The customer at a nearby table got a persimmon for dessert and scarfed it down, saying “Mm! This is it! This sweetness makes it worthy of being called a treasure among foods!” Asougi tried to comment on this by saying, “The customer at that table sure is enjoying his pershim--gak!” but he may or may not have accidentally bitten his tongue in the process and been unable to finish his sentence.

Iris- She accepted Ryuunosuke’s request to learn more about British culture and prepared a bagpipe and kilt costume for him. “This outfit sure is breezy,” Ryuunosuke said shyly upon trying it on. With Ryuunosuke now dressed, he, Iris, and the others from their office headed over to Gregson’s place to get him to treat them to some fish and chips.

Sherlock- He accepted Ryuunosuke’s request to learn more about British culture and cooked up some European style curry for dinner. Thanks to the fact that his secret ingredient was a large amount of Chinese herbal medicine style spice, it caused some strange side effects and Ryuunosuke, who’d eaten it, ended up passing out and falling over.

“Another taxing trial for Ryuunosuke has finished and now it’s December. As the year draws to a close, which character acts the strangest?”

Ryuunosuke- he was recruited to help with snow removal around Yumei University and the courthouse and he enthusiastically began his task with the help of a large shovel. He got a little carried away, though, and ended up accidentally burying his umbrella, which he’d left propped up against the side of the building, in the snow he’d just finished shoveling. He had no choice but to share Asougi’s umbrella on the way home.

Asougi- On the way home, he nods silently to Ryuunosuke’s question of whether he’d finished his travel preparations and changes the subject: “...Come to think of it, it seems that tomorrow is celebrated in the West as God’s birthday.” “I’ve heard that they eat chicken as part of the traditional celebration. Wanna try it?” Ryuunosuke asks invitingly. Asougi is strongly opposed to that particular menu item, however, and they end up going out for their usual beef stew that night instead.

Susato- in addition to her year-end travel preparations, she also was busy with straightening up the book room in her home. She managed to get the law books in order when she suddenly stumbled upon some old issues of Strand Magazine! She hurried through the rest of her cleaning, then began flipping through the magazines she’d found, trying to decide which to take with her on her trip. She accidentally lost herself in her reading and didn’t realize it until it was already the middle of the night.

Sherlock- he was in the middle of a long ship voyage when Christmas night came. His mind on his partner in a far-off country, he made a toast alone on deck, when suddenly the crew began shooting off fireworks with a cry of “Merry Christmas!” Sherlock had to dart back and forth across the deck to prevent the fireworks from hitting him and setting off the explosive chemicals he carries with him.

Main series edition

#dai gyakuten saiban #tgaa #naruhodo ryuunosuke #asougi kazuma #mikotoba susato #dgs sherlock holmes #hosonaga satoru #barok van zieks #iris watson #gina lestrade #translations #official content #my translation #mikotoba yuujin #ryunosuke naruhodo #kazuma asogi #susato mikotoba #iris wilson

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ashleesbookishadventure · 4 years

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The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

*Disclaimer - this post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). Thanks for your support! Here’s a link to my full disclosure statement.

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.

Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?

The Sun Is Also A Star is a story about 2 teenage people who meet randomly on the street and proceed to have a one-day long adventure. Tasha is using her last day in America to do absolutely anything she can to change her family’s immigration status so they’re not deported the next day. Daniel is on his way to a college interview when he would rather be doing anything else in the world. They meet by chance and Daniel spends the rest of the day trying to convince Tasha that they are meant to be.

Tasha and Daniel are polar opposites yet are super adorable. Daniel is a poet, well wants to be a poet despite his very Korean parent’s wishes for him to be a doctor. Tasha is cynical, logical, and, at this point, hopeless. She is being forced out of the only home she’s ever really known.

Outside of a few speed bumps, I loved everything about this book. I laughed out loud and I ugly cried (especially at the end!). The book is made up of choppy chapters of varying lengths and voices. Mostly its back and forth between Tasha and Daniel but there are a couple of extras dropped in too. I didn’t mind the extra chapters that were voiced by random characters but I didn’t love the non-character chapters. There was one about fate, one about “Irie”, etc. I could have done without those. They seemed unnecessary and took away from the story a little.

Being slightly cynical myself, I identify closely with Tasha; even though I have never had the threat of my entire world being taken away from me and could not possibly imagine what that’s like. I had a hard time buying Daniel’s sappiness and how he just knew they were meant to be. I was disappointed when he lost his cool a little towards her for not immediately agreeing with him about their situation. He almost was angry at her for no reason; although, she could have been upfront with him about her impending deportation. Either way. He wore her down though in the end and I thought it was sweet that they were each able to help the other through the events of that fateful day.

This book was made into a movie that stars Charles Melton and Yara Shahidi. I did not watch the movie prior to finishing the book (I was determined to finish first) but it was kind of nice having faces to go with the characters.

Ultimately, the book was great. The story was sweet and funny. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes YA romance. It’s aged appropriately; I believed they were high school students, the way they spoke and acted.

*Shameless plug: You should also check out Everything, Everything, also by Nicola Yoon. Another great read!

Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star. She is a National Book Award finalist, Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. Both her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, and lives in Los Angeles with her family.

#AshleesBookishAdventure #books #reading #currently reading #book reviews #the sun is also a star #nicola yoon #tbr #tbr post #booklr

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nrip · 5 years

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The healthcare system can't get a grip on its giant patient-matching m

Two days after her annual mammogram in 2018, Keely Aarnes got the call every woman dreads. She needed to return to the imaging center for another mammogram and an ultrasound. She might want to bring a family member along. “Of course, now I’m freaking out,” Aarnes said. “You go from 0 to 60 in two seconds.”

Aarnes returned to the imaging center and underwent the additional scans. Then the radiologist came into the room to discuss a potential abnormality–maybe nothing serious, but without a baseline image to compare, it was hard to know. Aarnes protested that she had, in fact, received two earlier mammograms at that imaging center in previous years. But the radiologist said no earlier radiology records for Keely Aarnes were on file.

“In that moment I knew exactly what happened,” Aarnes said. Without her complete records, the radiologist didn’t realize that Aarnes had a benign abnormality–something so well-documented in her medical history that Aarnes had not thought to mention it.

Aarnes escaped the incident with an unnecessary jolt of radiation and an insurance hassle when her health plan rejected the claim for the extra images. At least she didn’t lose a healthy kidney.

That’s what happened to a patient at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2016. Two patients with the same name had kidney scans on the same day; their records got mixed up, prompting one of the patients to be misdiagnosed with a large tumor that required kidney removal.

These aren’t strange outliers; they are the everyday world of healthcare. Patient matching–accurately matching patients to their medical records–bedevils every hospital, doctor’s office, laboratory, and other healthcare facility, risking patient safety and wasting money on unnecessary tests and procedures. There are two kinds of matching problems. The most dangerous is when records for different patients are mistakenly combined when, for example, two patients have similar names, leading to unnecessary kidney removals and other horrors. Much more common is the creation of so-called “duplicate” records for a single patient. That’s when Johnathan Michael Smith–known to his friends as Mike–is identified as Johnathan M. Smith in his primary care doctor’s electronic health record; as Mike Smith in the cardiologist’s record; as Jonathan M. Smithe at the allergist’s office; and as Johna Smith at the laboratory.

That mishmash is a symptom of America’s decentralized healthcare system, where facilities make up their own rules for how to collect patient demographics, such as name, date of birth, and address. The seriousness of the patient-match problem has come into focus with the advent of electronic health records (or “EHRs”), which, theoretically, should allow any physician to see Smith’s full medical history on the computer screen. Fixing the problem will require thousands of hospitals, physician offices, laboratories, and other facilities to agree on how Johnathan Michael Smith is identified. Without a centralized authority, this has proven impossible so far.

The federal government, courtesy of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, spent more than $30 billion to incentivize physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic medical records. But each facility chose its own EHR vendor, the vendors were not required to use a standard format for collecting patient information, and each hospital or doctor’s office chooses which information it wants to collect.

In the half-century since EHR technology tiptoed into healthcare, hospitals and doctors have used hundreds of vendors, each of which is constantly updating its technology, thereby creating new opportunities for inconsistencies. Today, on average, 18% of patient records within organizations are duplicates, according to a 2018 survey conducted by Black Book Market Research. And the match rates between organizations–for example, between a doctor’s office and the hospital–can be extremely low. Even when organizations share the same EHR vendor, variable data-entry protocols between organizations can drop match rates to as low as 50%.

That means physicians are often unaware of information that patients assume they know: test results, diagnoses, medications, and more. When the Pew Charitable Trusts recruited consumers to participate in focus groups about patient matching, most were unaware that the problem even exists. But they quickly grasped how dangerous the situation can be, said Ben Moscovitch, Pew’s project director for health information technology.

“The patients that we spoke to in our focus groups indicated that they wanted this problem solved,” he said.

On its face, patient matching looks like a simple problem to fix, until you look closely.

One root problem is that the healthcare industry has been consolidating for years, and the pace of mergers is only speeding up. Take the example of Northwell Health. Already the largest healthcare provider in New York State, Northwell is growing rapidly through acquisitions. Every time the system adds a new hospital, their medical records are integrated–and duplicates proliferate. Is the Raj Patel treated at the newly acquired hospital the same Raj Patel already on file at Northwell?

Meanwhile, Northwell’s 23 hospitals and more than 700 clinics are creating new duplicate records every day. Anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 people seek care at one of its facilities each month, and busy registrars often scramble to keep up. “When you get a very common name like Smith, Gonzalez, Rodriguez, Miller, you’ll call that patient up in the system and you’ll literally get 50 of them,” said Frank Danza, senior vice president for revenue cycle management at the health system. “Rather than try to figure out which of those 50 is the right one, [the registrar] will create a new case, knowing that there’s a way to reconcile it later on.”

He’s not exaggerating. In 2016, Harris Health System in Houston reported it had 2,488 records with the name “Maria Garcia”; of those, 231 shared the same birth date, suggesting some of them refer to the same individual. But if those records have different addresses or telephone numbers, who can be sure? Harris also found nearly 250,000 cases in which two or more patients had the same first and last names; more than 76,000 times in which five or more patients shared first and last names; and nearly 70,000 instances of two or more patients sharing first name, last name, and date of birth.

In that head-spinning milieu, the College of Health Care Information Management Executives, the professional organization for chief information officers in the healthcare industry, launched a National Patient ID Challenge in 2015, offering a $1 million prize to anyone who could develop a software tool that could match patient records with 100% accuracy. More than 350 individuals and teams registered to compete; more than two years later, the challenge was abandoned without a winner.

Although 100% accuracy might be impossible, there are ways to improve the patient-match rate substantially, Moscovitch said. For example, hospitals could use data from outside sources–post office change-of-address forms, for example–to help sort out records that appear to be duplicates. Or patients could receive a text message that would require a response, thereby verifying a medical record was linked to the right person.

Pew did a deep dive into these and other potential solutions. Its finding: None of the ideas are as easy as they look at first glance.

“All the opportunities we examined to address matching have benefits and drawbacks–and none of the opportunities alone can solve this problem,” Moscovitch said.

Pew’s favorite idea is one that has been often suggested but never implemented nationwide: data standardization. If all healthcare organizations collected certain pieces of demographic data in a uniform way, patient-match rates would increase significantly. Just a little bit of standardization could go a long way, according to Pew’s research. For example, if every facility recorded patient last names and addresses according to U.S. Postal Service standards (AVE instead of AV or AVENUE; LN instead of LANE), match rates would improve by more than 10%.

Pew is also digging deeper into another idea: iris scans or some other unique identifier. It’s a more complicated fix that would take a lot of time to figure out and implement, but it could be worth the effort. “Overwhelmingly, the patients in our focus groups indicated that biometrics would be their preferred way to have their records matched,” Moscovitch said.

In fact, a unique patient identifier–a single number, possibly linked to an iris scan or other biometric, that distinguishes one Liu Wang from every other Liu Wang in the country–might be the most logical solution to the problem. Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, rattles off countries that have figured out a way to make that work: India, Israel, South Africa, and others.

In Norway, each person is assigned an 11-digit number at birth. For example, 01-12-99-551-31 specifies a man born on January 12, 1899, who was the 55th person born in Norway that day. That number is used for many purposes, such as paying taxes, opening a bank account, or keeping track of all the individual’s medical diagnoses, procedures, and interactions with the healthcare system throughout a lifetime.

“In the rest of the world, it’s, ‘How could you possibly coordinate someone’s care if you didn’t have a unique identifier?'” he said.

In the U.S., however, it is essentially against the law for the government to invest in a unique health identifier. Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) required the adoption of such an identifier, Congress later squashed that idea, citing a risk to patient privacy.

That prohibition is still in place, but in a bipartisan spending bill in 2017, Congress acknowledged that patient matching is a serious problem and encouraged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to work with the private sector to figure out a fix. Some Congress members are expressing support for a unique identifier, and the government is peeking into the idea a bit. Considering the current political climate, however, Halamka isn’t getting his hopes up.

“The idea that you could get the electorate to believe in having a government-assigned number to track you is just not a politically tenable idea in the U.S.,” he said. “We’re just too darned committed to our freedom.”

Maybe not everybody. Two states, Nevada and Minnesota, have laws allowing use of patient identifiers within their state borders. And Halamka thinks a voluntary unique-identifier program for individuals who want to make sure their medical records are matched is worth exploring.

The next best idea, in his view, is a nationwide patient-matching strategy that gets hospitals, physicians, information-technology vendors, and everyone else approaching the issue in the same way.

While they are waiting for a nationwide strategy, individual health systems are trying to fix their own patient-match problems.

A little over a year ago, Northwell had a list of 220,000 possible duplicate records and was creating about 700 possible duplicates a day. “We were taking on water and we were sinking,” said Keely Aarnes, associate vice president of revenue cycle management at Northwell. (Yes: Aarnes, victim of the patient-matching fail at the radiology center, is an expert in patient matching, both personally and professionally.)

In 2016, she led Northwell’s attack on that towering pile of possible duplicates, starting with a manual review of the “no-brainers”–duplicates that were obviously for the same person but needed someone to take a close look before hitting the “merge” key. To keep the backlog from rebuilding, the health system introduced “probabilistic matching,” checking newly created records against the 6 million patients in Northwell’s master patient index. Is Mary Smith who lives at 231 Crest Wood Ave. the same as Mary Smith who lives at 231 Crestwood?

Next, Northwell introduced “referential matching,” in which patient records are matched against a proprietary database that includes identity information from cable companies, the U.S. Postal Service, and so forth for 350 million people dating back three decades.

Most recently, Northwell started testing an artificial intelligence technology that takes photos of patients and uses iris recognition to match them to their records. Harris Health System has also introduced biometric technology, in the form of palm-vein scans. Ideally, this will help ensure that all Maria Garcias are properly matched to their medical records–at least until they need to visit a different health system.

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