Converting an alphanumerical character string into a signature

1. A computing system comprising:

a processor; and

memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform acts comprising:

receiving an alphanumerical character string, the alphanumerical character string comprises data that is indicative of an identity of a patient;

responsive to receiving the alphanumerical character string, partitioning the alphanumerical character string into multiple substrings, wherein a first substring in the multiple substrings comprises a first number of alphanumerical characters, and a second substring in the multiple substrings comprises a second number of alphanumerical characters;

for the first substring in the multiple substrings, identifying a sequence of bits that is uniquely mapped to the first substring in a mapping table;

removing at least one bit from the sequence of bits to create an updated sequence of bits, wherein bits other than the removed at least one bit are retained in the updated sequence of bits;

identifying a third substring based upon the updated sequence of bits, wherein the third substring is uniquely mapped to the updated sequence of bits in the mapping table;

including the third substring in a signature for the alphanumerical substring;

associating, in a database, medical data of the patient with the signature, wherein the medical data for the patient is associated with the signature rather than the alphanumerical character string;

receiving a request to retrieve the medical data for the patient, the request comprises the alphanumerical character string;

responsive to receiving the request, converting the alphanumerical character string into the signature; and

retrieving the medical data of the patient responsive to converting the alphanumerical character string into the signature.

2. The computing system of claim 1 , wherein the alphanumerical character string comprises a name of the patient and a date of birth of the patient.

3. The computing system of claim 1 , wherein partitioning the alphanumerical character string into the multiple substrings comprises:

identifying a number of characters in the alphanumerical character string;

identifying a partition rule from a partition table based upon the number of characters in the alphanumerical character string; and

partitioning the alphanumerical character string into the multiple substrings based upon the partition rule, wherein the partition rule defines a number of substrings in the multiple substrings and a number of alphanumerical characters in each substring of the multiple substrings.

4. The computing system of claim 3 , wherein the number of alphanumerical characters in any of the multiple substrings is one alphanumerical character, two alphanumerical characters, or three alphanumerical characters.

5. The computing system of claim 1 , the acts further comprising:

repeating, for each substring in the multiple substrings, the acts of identifying, removing, identifying, and including.

6. The computing system of claim 5 , wherein the signature comprises second multiple substrings, the acts further comprising:

prior to including the second multiple substrings in the signature, reordering the second multiple substrings based upon locations of each substring in the second multiple substrings in the mapping table, wherein a sequence of substrings in the signature is different from a sequence of the corresponding substrings in the alphanumerical character string.

7. The computing system of claim 1 , wherein an electronic health record application (EHR) is configured to perform the acts when the processor executes the EHR.

8. A method executed at a server computing device, the method comprising:

receiving, by a processor of the server computing device, an alphanumerical character string, the alphanumerical character string comprises data that is indicative of an identity of a patient;

generating, by the processor, a signature for the alphanumerical character string, wherein generating the signature comprises:

partitioning the alphanumerical character string into a several substrings, wherein a first substring in the several substrings comprises a first number of alphanumerical characters, and a second substring in the several substrings comprises a second number of alphanumerical characters;

for the first substring in the multiple substrings, retrieving a sequence of bits from a mapping table, the sequence of bits is uniquely mapped to the first substring in the mapping table;

forming an updated sequence of bits from the sequence of bits, wherein forming the updated sequence of bits comprises removing at least one bit from the sequence of bits while retaining an order of remaining bits in the sequence of bits;

responsive to forming the updated sequence of bits, retrieving a third substring from the mapping table, the third substring uniquely mapped to the updated sequence of bits in the mapping table, wherein the third substring is included as a portion of the signature;

mapping, by the processor, the signature to medical data of the patient in a database;

subsequent to mapping the signature to the medical data of the patient in the database, receiving, by the processor, a request to retrieve the medical data of the patient, the request comprises the alphanumerical character string;

responsive to receiving the request, converting, by the processor, the alphanumerical character string into a second signature;

identifying, by the processor, that the second signature matches the signature in the database; and

retrieving, by the processor, the medical data from the database based upon the second signature matching the signature.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein generating the signature further comprises:

prior to partitioning the alphanumerical character string into the several substrings:

identifying a number of alphanumerical characters in the alphanumerical character string; and

determining a number of substrings into which the alphanumerical character string is to be partitioned based upon the number of alphanumerical characters in the alphanumerical character string, wherein the alphanumerical character string is partitioned into the number of substrings.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein generating the substring further comprises:

prior to partitioning the alphanumerical character string into the several substrings: determining, for each substring into which the alphanumerical character string is to be partitioned, a number of alphanumerical characters that are to be included in the substring, wherein the alphanumerical character string is partitioned based upon the number of alphanumerical characters that are to be included in the substring.

11. The method of claim 8 , wherein generating the signature further comprises:

for each substring in the several substrings:

retrieving a respective sequence of bits from the mapping table, the respective sequence of bits is uniquely mapped to the respective substring in the mapping table;

forming a respective updated sequence of bits from the respective sequence of bits, wherein forming the respective updated sequence of bits comprises removing at least one bit from the respective sequence of bits while retaining an order of remaining bits in the respective sequence of bits; and

responsive to forming the respective updated sequence of bits, retrieving a respective fourth substring from the mapping table, the respective fourth substring uniquely mapped to the respective updated sequence of bits in the mapping table, wherein each fourth substring is included in the signature.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein generating the signature further comprises:

ordering the updated sequences of bits based upon their values, wherein an order of the fourth substrings in the signature corresponds to the ordering of the updated sequence of bits.

13. The method of claim 8 , wherein the first substring consists of a first number of alphanumerical characters, and the third substring consists of a second number of alphanumerical characters that is different from the first number of alphanumerical characters.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the second number of alphanumerical characters is greater than the first number of alphanumerical characters.

15. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:

responsive to receiving the alphanumerical character string, automatically creating a second alphanumerical character string;

generating a third signature for the second alphanumerical character string; and

including the third signature in the database.

16. The method of claim 8 , wherein the alphanumerical character string is received from a computing device that executes an electronic health record application (EHR).

17. A computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform acts comprising:

receiving an alphanumerical character string, the alphanumerical character string comprises data that is indicative of an identity of a patient;

generating a signature for the alphanumerical character string, wherein generating the signature comprises:

partitioning the alphanumerical character string into a several substrings, wherein a first substring in the several substrings comprises a first number of alphanumerical characters, and a second substring in the several substrings comprises a second number of alphanumerical characters;

for the first substring in the several substrings, retrieving a sequence of bits from a mapping table, the sequence of bits is uniquely mapped to the first substring in the mapping table;

forming an updated sequence of bits from the sequence of bits, wherein forming the updated sequence of bits comprises removing at least one bit from the sequence of bits while retaining an order of remaining bits in the sequence of bits; and

responsive to forming the updated sequence of bits, retrieving a third substring from the mapping table, the third substring uniquely mapped to the updated sequence of bits in the mapping table, wherein the third substring is included as a portion of the signature; and

mapping the signature to medical data of the patient in a database, wherein the medical data is retrievable from the database when a query executed over the database comprises the signature.