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Sometimes two records at your pharmacy or practice turn out to describe the same person — registered twice, under slightly different details. ClinikEHR cannot know this for certain, so it never decides for you: it shows you a possible match, with the reason it noticed, and you look and decide. This is a prompt, never a finding — nothing about it changes a sale, a dispensing warning, or anything a check evaluates, and nothing is ever merged automatically.

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What counts as a possible match

Two records are shown together only when their date of birth is the same, and at least one of the following also matches:
  • The same phone number (formatting and country code ignored — “0803 555 0101” and “+234 803 555 0101” are treated as the same number).
  • The same full name (capitalisation, spacing, accents, and the order names are written in are all ignored).
A shared phone number alone is never enough — households share one number. A shared name alone is never enough — common names repeat. And a missing date of birth on either record means no comparison is made at all.

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The twins example — a known, expected case

Twins share a date of birth, a surname, and very often the household phone number. Because the phone rule doesn’t need the given name to agree, twins will show up as a possible match — the same phone, the same date of birth, different first names. This is expected, not a mistake: look at the two names, and mark them Different people in one click.

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Where you’ll see it

A small note on a customer’s or patient’s own profile, “Possibly the same customer as …” (or “patient”, depending on your edition), when a match exists for them: And a full list of every possible match at your pharmacy, on its own tab:

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What each button does

  • Different people — records that you checked and they are not the same person. This pair will not be shown to you again.
  • Same person — to be combined by hand — records that you believe they ARE the same person. Nothing is merged automatically — ClinikEHR has no merge feature. Combine the two records’ information yourself, and make sure your team knows which one to keep using.
  • Either button opens a small panel where you can add an optional reason.

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What this is not

This is not the same thing as the External access card you may see on the same profile — that one is about outside organisations reaching this person’s record through the API, a completely different question. It is also not “Possible duplicates” — the review for a record created twice by an import or an API connection. This feature is about two separately registered people who might be the same human being.