Teaching our REDCap basic anatomy, cancer classifications, and some common sense

This post was originally published here

With over 11,000 patients now entered into REDCap and more being entered every day we thought it would be a good time to reflect on some of the ways in which GlobalSurg 3 has been set up to help collaborators from around the world enter accurate and high-quality data.

With so many important things to know about each patient undergoing cancer surgery, the GlobalSurg team of nearly 3000 collaborators has been busy entering data into our secure database at redcap.globalsurg.org (REDCap is an amazing database software developed by Vanderbilt University). With over 750,000 values entered, it isn’t surprising that from time to time a mistake occurs whilst entering the data. This might be because the data entered onto a paper form was incorrect to begin with or it might be due to accidentally clicking on the wrong options when entering the data to REDCap. In some cases, the incorrect data might even appear in the notes if the surgeon or the anaesthetist has forgotten how to decide on the most appropriate ASA grade.

To try to help our collaborators identify cases when these mistakes may have happened we have taught our REDCap some basic anatomy, cancer classifications and some common sense so that it can alert collaborators to mistake mistakes as soon as they occur. The automatic alerts appear when a collaborator tries to save a page with incorrect data meaning that they can change it immediately when they still have access to the patient notes.

Our REDCap now knows 58 things about cancer surgery that it is using to help collaborators enter accurate data.

globalsurg_redcap_dq (1).png

Figure 1. Examples of our (a) paper data collection form, (b) REDCap interface, and (c) a data quality pop-up warning.

All 58 rules are given at the bottom of this post, but here are some examples:

  • Our REDCap knows some basic anaesthesiology:
    • As a collaborator if you have tried to enter a patient with diabetes mellitus and stated that they have an ASA grade of 1 Our REDCap should have informed you that diabetic patients should really have an ASA grade of 2 or more
  • Our REDCap knows the basics of anatomy:
    • It knows that if a patient had a total colectomy that they don’t have a colostomy
  • Our REDCap knows about TNM staging:
    • It knows that patients with an M score of M1 should also have an Essential TNM score of M+
  • Our REDCap also knows some common sense:
    • It knows that patients can’t have more involved lymph nodes in a specimen that the total number of lymph nodes in a specimen
    • It knows that a patient couldn’t have their operation before being admitted to the hospital

Our REDCap has been working tirelessly for several months to generate these alerts and help collaborators ensure their data is accurate. We hope that training REDCap to detect problems with the data will make the GlobalSurg 3 analysis more efficient and contribute to the accuracy of the data.

The final data entry deadline is 17th December so remember to upload all of your data before then. Our REDCap is ready and waiting to store and check the data.

View and download all of our Data Quality rules at github.com/SurgicalInformatics

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