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Nevertheless, having manually linked forms allowed us to take some basic rules for automated linking and to refine these with respect to edge-cases and other scenarios not initially considered.
An iterative ‘divide-and-conquer' approach was used to establish automated linkages. This permitted more clear-cut scenarios to be dealt with before handling more complex situations, without having to deal with every eventuality in a single step. A disadvantage of this method is that no overarching rule is available, and that the linkages established are highly dependent on the sequencing of the steps involved: later steps are implicitly dependent on earlier steps having already dealt with forms that the rules of the later steps do not address (or would link incorrectly).
Pre-processing and standardisation
FormR local offices are captured manually by trainees, and as such my vary from the ‘canonical’ name. In addition, official local office names have recently been updated as part of the standardisation to merge Health Education England into the NHS proper.
Details of the rules for standardising FormR local offices are item A.
To make TIS programmes and specialties more consistent, TIS programme names were standardised and assigned a parent as defined in items B1 and B2.