The use of checksums to ensure data integrity in the healthcare industry

AbstractWant to ensure data integrity? Want to know if a file has been altered? Checksum, please! Checksums have a variety of applications, such as verifying that an application has been installed correctly and providing a method of verifying whether or not a file has been altered. For example, checksums can be used in a SAS® program to verify that a comma delimited (comma-separated values, CSV) file has not been altered before importing the CSV file into a SAS dataset. Fortunately, all operating systems have some utility available to do checksums. This paper will provide some background on the use of checksums and concentrate on a particular example using lab instrument data.