During de-duplication, what role does data stewardship review play?

• A. It enables merging records as canonical
• B. It triggers data deletion
• C. It encrypts all data during exchange
• D. It formats data into PDF only

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is that de-duplication relies on governance to decide which record will be the single, trusted version—the canonical record—and how the information from duplicates is merged into that one record. Data stewardship review provides that governance: it determines which patient record becomes the authoritative source and guides how fields from the duplicate records are reconciled, ensuring demographics, identifiers, and history are consistent and accurate. This oversight makes the merged, canonical record the unified truth used across the system, which is the essential goal of de-duplication.

The other options don’t fit because encryption during exchange is a security operation, not part of deciding which record should be the canonical source nor how to merge data. Formatting data into PDF is a presentation or export concern, not a core part of merging duplicates. Triggering data deletion can be a policy outcome in some workflows, but the stewardship role in de-duplication is specifically about selecting and reconciling to a canonical record, not automatically deleting duplicates.