IMM/Scrub: A Domain-Specific Tool for the Deduplication of Vaccination History Records in Childhood Immunization Registries

IMM/Scrub is a pilot tool developed to assist in the deduplication of vaccination history records in childhood immunization registries. This problem is complicated by a number of factors including that fact that: (1) some doses are numbered and some are not, (2) doses may have different dose numbers, (3) doses may specify different preparations within a vaccine series, (4) one dose may indicate a combination vaccine and the other dose may specify one component of that combination, (5) two doses may have slightly different dates, and (6) combinations of any of these problems may occur together. IMM/Scrub is designed to help detect 10 different types of vaccination dose duplicates and also allows the user to specify flexibly the conditions in which a duplicate dose might be automatically eliminated. In addition, IMM/Scrub is linked to the IMM/Serve immunization forecasting program, which can provide additional assistance in the data cleaning process. The paper describes (1) the design of the current pilot implementation of IMM/Scrub, (2) the lessons learned during its implementation, and (3) our preliminary experience applying it to data from three immunization databases, from a state, a metropolitan area, and an academic medical center.