Easy access to patient data through Patient Reports
Bianca Slieker is a data monitor at SHM. During the past year she has worked hard on developing and implementing the new Patient Reports, which replace the original hospital specific data sets known as ‘site sets’. In the following interview she explains the Patient Reports in further detail.
What are Patient Reports?
Patient Reports provide information on both the individual patient and the patient group. These new reports are generated quickly and securely online, directly from the SHM data warehouse. They contain the raw unprocessed data entered into the data warehouse by the data collectors. The reports have three main types of information. The first is Patient Data, which gives an overview of clinical and medical data, as well as lab results for each patient. Secondly, there is a section titled Graphs which displays the changes in viral load, CD4 value and antiretroviral drug use over time for each patient. The third section is titled Tables and includes reports based on imported raw data for all patients in care in a particular hospital, or for a selected group of patients in that hospital. Default query options are available for generating overviews of data that’s most commonly of interest. Data can then be exported to programs such as Excel for further analysis.
Why have the ‘site sets’ been replaced with this new product?
The main reason is that the capacity limit was almost reached in the old system, which meant that the hospital specific data sets (‘site sets’) couldn’t run properly any longer. We therefore decided to move the data to a new system that offered opportunities for expansion and more services.
Who uses the Patient Reports?
The Patient Reports are used by HIV treatment teams and researchers in hospitals. The reports are also used by our data collectors for importing the data into the system and our data monitors for carrying out data quality controls.
How long have you been working on improving and introducing the new reports? How was it carried out?
It’s taken over a year to realize the new reports. As part of the process, we revised the old products and developed new products. An example of the new functionality that allows easy access to data is the standard query filters, which are included in the Tables section. The user can easily and quickly make a selection of data by simply clicking on a button. That is a huge improvement over the old system.
How can users use the reports? What is their added value?
Through using the Patient Data and Graphs sections, users can easily gain an overview of data related to a specific patient. Also, it’s possible for HIV treatment teams to gain an overview of the data available for all their patients at a hospital level. For example, it’s easy to access data on the number of CDC events amongst a group of patients, or the number of patients with hepatitis co-infections. It’s also possible to gain an overall picture of the demographics of the patient group, or look at the types of medication used. The value of the Patient Reports is that they give HIV treatment centre teams more insight into their patients and patient group. Keeping in the back of your mind that this is raw data that needs to be interpreted correctly, the ultimate goal of these reports is benefitting the care of patients.