Data story

Data story: What the hell is MDM?

In 2018, I joined a tech project at ZS and encountered several new (& frankly scary 😊) terms like MDM, data stewardship, staging layer, reporting layer, schema, etc. Among these, MDM was particularly intriguing, and we used Reltio for it. 

Reltio MDM helps organizations achieve a unified view of their data, enabling better decision-making and improved business outcomes. It matches and merges records, manages relationships (affiliations), and handles various data aspects like data management, data quality, and governance.

From a pharmaceutical data perspective, MDM is extremely useful. Every day, prescribers and healthcare organizations generate prescriptions. This data is captured by specialty pharmacies, distributors, retail pharmacies, and payers. However, these different data providers may use varying name and address formats for healthcare professionals (HCPs). 

For example, John Doe might be listed as J. Doe, John D., or John A. Doe, and the address might appear as 12 Elm St. (instead of Street), Springfield, IL 62701, USA. This leads to multiple records for the same entity in the database. 

MDM plays a crucial role here by using "fuzzy match" to consolidate these different records into a single entity (above 70% accuracy for addresses and above 85% for names). MDM merges all these records with the reference name and address of John Doe: NPI ID: 1234567890, Name: John Doe, and Address: 12 Elm Street, Springfield, IL 62701, USA.

For a data analyst, the biggest benefit is that in a Tableau dashboard, you will see only one record for John Doe instead of multiple records with slight variations in name or address.

Spoiler: Have you realized that the Social Security Number (SSN) in the US and the Aadhaar number in India are examples of Master Data Management (MDM), creating a single, consistent, and accurate source of truth for each citizen. 😇 

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Read past stories like above at https://lnkd.in/d9ijze8r