Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34535146›Full record

ArticleBMC medical informatics and decision making2021

An automated data cleaning method for Electronic Health Records by incorporating clinical knowledge.

Xi Shi, Charlotte Prins, Gijs Van Pottelbergh, Pavlos Mamouris, Bert Vaes, Bart De Moor

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
16citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Xi ShiDepartment of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), Stadius Centre for Dynamical Systems, Signal Processing and Data Analytics, KU Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - Box 2446, 3001, Leuven, Belgium. xi.shi@esat.kuleuven.be.
Charlotte PrinsLeuven Statistics Research Center, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Gijs Van PottelberghAcademic Center for General Practice, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Pavlos MamourisAcademic Center for General Practice, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Bert VaesAcademic Center for General Practice, KU Leuven, 3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Bart De MoorDepartment of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), Stadius Centre for Dynamical Systems, Signal Processing and Data Analytics, KU Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - Box 2446, 3001, Leuven, Belgium.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) data in clinical research is incredibly increasing, but the abundancy of data resources raises the challenge of data cleaning. It can save time if the data cleaning can be done automatically. In addition, the automated data cleaning tools for data in other domains often process all variables uniformly, meaning that they cannot serve well for clinical data, as there is variable-specific information that needs to be considered. This paper proposes an automated data cleaning method for EHR data with clinical knowledge taken into consideration.

methodsWe used EHR data collected from primary care in Flanders, Belgium during 1994-2015. We constructed a Clinical Knowledge Database to store all the variable-specific information that is necessary for data cleaning. We applied Fuzzy search to automatically detect and replace the wrongly spelled units, and performed the unit conversion following the variable-specific conversion formula. Then the numeric values were corrected and outliers were detected considering the clinical knowledge. In total, 52 clinical variables were cleaned, and the percentage of missing values (completeness) and percentage of values within the normal range (correctness) before and after the cleaning process were compared.

resultsAll variables were 100% complete before data cleaning. 42 variables had a drop of less than 1% in the percentage of missing values and 9 variables declined by 1-10%. Only 1 variable experienced large decline in completeness (13.36%). All variables had more than 50% values within the normal range after cleaning, of which 43 variables had a percentage higher than 70%.

conclusionsWe propose a general method for clinical variables, which achieves high automation and is capable to deal with large-scale data. This method largely improved the efficiency to clean the data and removed the technical barriers for non-technical people.

Indexed as

Electronic Health RecordsPrimary Health CareAutomationBelgiumDatabases, FactualHumansAutomated methodClinical decision supportData cleaning

Identifiers

PMID34535146
PMCPMC8449435

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.