Posts for the month of November 2011

Automatically populating REDCap fields from earlier forms

In our work on the Alzheimers Disease Core Center, we had information entered into one REDCap form that we wanted to see in another.

REDCap doesn't offer this out of the box, so we added a little code (attachment:calc_text.patch​ ; #569). The way it works is a little quirky:

  1. In the usual REDCap fashion,
    1. Make a new field
    2. Choose Calculated Field for Field Type.
    3. Put the name of the source field in square brackets in the Calculation Equation. For example, [last_name]
  2. Now for the quirk: start the Variable Name for this new automatically populated field with
    • text_ for a single-line text field; for example: text_display_last_name
    • textarea_ for a multi-line text area.

OK, so using the variable name like this is sort of cheating, but hey... it seems to work for now.

If you would like us to show it to you in person, feel free to come to our FrontiersInformaticsClinic, which meets today at 4pm in Dykes 410. If today doesn't work, we're there every other Tuesday. Check the ​KUMC calendar.

HERON Tuttlecreek release brings initial Tumor Registry integration

This month's HERON release integrates data from the KUH Tumor Registry, with 65,000 cases dating back to the 1950s(#547). We have also added support for finding patients in KCK county school districts (#531).

Russ regularly gives presentations on our work, describing the integration of various sources into HERON. Since this diagram from How Medical Informatics and HERON Can Help Your Research?, given on November 17, we have integrated the Social Security death master file as well as the tumor registry:

HERON Tuttlecreek Contents Summary

This month, our tour of rivers and lakes in Kansas honors ​Tuttle Creek Lake.

The HERON repository contains approximately 570 million real observations from the hospital, clinics, and research systems:

Observation Patients Source Go-Live Snapshot Issues
Demographics 15.9M 1.88M
KUH Billing (O2 via SMS) 1980s Oct 2011 various*
UKP Billing 2000 Oct 2011
6.64K 6.64K Frontiers participant registry Jun 2009 Oct 2011
Diagnoses (IDC9) 17.2M 571K
KUH/O2/Epic Nov 2007 Oct 2011 various*
UKP Billing 2000 Oct 2011
Medications 26.3M 96K
KUH/O2/Epic Nov 2007 Oct 2011 various*
Nursing Observations 407M ?
KUH/O2/Epic Nov 2007 Oct 2011 various*
Lab Results 67.2M 240K
KUH/O2/Epic Nov 2007 Oct 2011 various*
Procedures (CPT) 9.1M 523K
UKP Billing 2000 Oct 2011
Specimines 23.1K 2.48K
KUMC Biospecimine Repository ? Oct 2011
Cancer Cases 6.21M 60.4K
KUH Cancer Registry 1950s Aug 2011 labels*
All 570M

Beta Disclaimer

We are providing this early access to obtain feedback from you, the research community. While we are actively working on validating the data loaded into the system with hospital and clinic technical staff, there may be problems with our translation of data from our source systems (HospitalEpicSource and ClinicIdxSource) into HERON.

Please email us at heron-admin@kumc.edu if you discover information you believe may be erroneous.

We are actively working on enhancing the types of data included. Stay tuned to our roadmap to track progress toward upcoming releases.

Various Issues Still Apply

Keep in mind the issues noted in the original HERON beta notice, including:

Problems/Defects/Issues Addressed in this Release

No major issues addressed.

Outstanding Problems/Defects/Issues

No results