%0 Journal Article
%T Is OpenSDE an alternative for dedicated medical research databases? An example in coronary surgery
%A Angeliek C Venema
%A Astrid M van Ginneken
%A Marcel de Wilde
%A Ad JJC Bogers
%J BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6947-7-31
%X This study illustrates the use of OpenSDE as a potential alternative to a conventional approach with respect to data modelling, database creation, data entry, and data extraction.A database and entry forms are created using OpenSDE and MSAccess to support collection of coronary surgery data, based on the Adult Cardiac Surgery Data Set of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Data of 52 cases are entered and nine different queries are designed, and executed on both databases.Design of the data model and the creation of entry forms were experienced as more intuitive and less labor intensive with OpenSDE. Both resulting databases provided sufficient expressiveness to accommodate the data set. Data entry was more flexible with OpenSDE. Queries produced equal and correct results with comparable effort.For prospective studies involving well-defined and straight forward data sets, OpenSDE deserves to be considered as an alternative to the conventional approach.Acquisition of patient data for clinical research is challenging, because routinely collected patient data is often incomplete, fragmented (divided over different data sources), or poorly accessible (on paper or in free text format). Therefore, clinical research projects usually involve dedicated data collection in addition to data recording for routine care. It is quite common for researchers to develop a new dedicated database with data entry screens, each time a new data set is required. Is there an alternative approach for the relatively labor-intensive development of dedicated research databases and separate data collection effort?OpenSDE (SDE = Structured Data Entry) has been developed to support structured recording of data for both research and care, and is designed to accommodate quickly growing and changing data sets [1]. An essential characteristic of OpenSDE is the separation of data content from database structure. OpenSDE, based on a row-oriented data model, offers flexible and intuitive definition and adap
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6947/7/31