Establishing a centralized data mart from the Rakai community cohort study to improve HIV research in Rakai, Uganda

To improve timely access to quality HIV research data, the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP) Data Mart was developed to store cohort study data from a legacy database platform in a modernized system using standard data management processes. The RHSP Data Mart was developed on a Microsoft SQL Server platform using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services with custom data mappings and queries. The data mart stores 20+ years of longitudinal HIV research data and includes standard processes for managing data, data dictionary, training materials, and a library of queries to fulfill data requests and load new data from completed survey rounds. The RHSP Data Mart enables efficient querying and analysis of multidimensional research data by simplifying data integration and processing. A sustainable database platform with well-defined data management processes promotes data accessibility and reproducibility, enabling researchers to advance their understanding and management of infectious diseases.

Overdose rate of drugs requiring renal dose adjustment: data analysis of 4 years prescriptions at a tertiary teaching hospital

OBJECTIVE

To determine the overdose rate of drugs that require renal dose adjustment and factors related with overdose.

SUBJECTS

Total of 23,635,210 records of prescriptions and laboratory data of inpatients at a tertiary teaching hospital for the period from January 2002 to December 2005.

METHODS

A clinical data mart was constructed. A knowledge base containing dose adjusting information about 56 drugs was built. One day dose was compared to the reference dose adjusted to the patient's renal function.

RESULTS

Considering the patient's renal function, 5.3% of drug doses were excessive. The overdose rate in the patients with moderate to severe renal insufficiency was 28.2%. Only 25% of physicians were responsible for 50.6% of the overdoses. Of 56 drugs studied, 10 drugs, including ranitidine, amoxicillin, and piperacillin/tazobactam, were involved in 85.4% of the overdoses. The physicians with high overdose rate had patients with more impaired renal function (correlation coefficient = 0.192, P < .001). There were negative correlation between clinical experiences of physician and overdose rate (correlation coefficient = -0.221, P < .001) and workload of prescription (correlation coefficient = -0.446, P < .001), when excluding interns from the analyses. There was positive correlation between workload of prescription and overdose rate (correlation coefficient = 0.361, P < .001).

CONCLUSION

A clinical data mart was useful to analyze the vast amount of electronic hospital data. Drug overdose is quite common among inpatients with renal insufficiency. Only a few drugs are responsible for most of drug overdoses. The physicians' clinical experience, workload of prescriptions, and patients' renal function are correlated with drug overdose.