A METHOD OF LINKING ELECTRONIC DATABASE RECORDS

A method of linking electronic database records, wherein each record is associated with a single member from a set of unique members, and wherein each member from the set of unique members has associated with it a plurality of identifiers for uniquely identifying the member. The method comprising the following steps. First, a set of combinations of identifiers is obtained by, for each record, determining a plurality of identifiers using the data stored in the record. Next, a set of clusters of linked combinations of identifiers is created, by creating a link between any combinations that have equal identifiers. For each cluster from the set of clusters, a quality value for the cluster is calculated, and any cluster whose quality value is below a pre-determined threshold is split into two or more clusters by removing one or more links between combinations in the original cluster, if in that case the resulting clusters have higher quality values than the original cluster. Finally, any records whose corresponding combinations of identifiers are members of the same cluster are linked.