About the "CARE - Concept Demographics Histograms" Web Client Plugin

Introduction

This plugin is part of the CARE (Cohort Analysis & Refinement Expeditors) Tool Set developed as a result of feedback and suggestions from the i2b2 users community in the University of Massachusetts Medical School. As its name implies, the purpose of this tool set is to facilitate and expedite the analysis of the cohorts (i.e. a subset of a patient set) and therefore hopefully the refined usage of those particular cohorts in a study.

This plugin provides the following main functions:

• Generates demographic histograms on the subsets of patients associated (observed) with any selected concepts (ontology terms).
• Allows the use of smaller queries of patient subgroups (from a large patient set) iteratively, in place of one single large query of that huge patient set, to reduce risk of overwhelming the server (i2b2 hive).
• Allows selection of subset of patients from a large patient set, to further reduce risk of overwhelming the server.
• Provides feedbacks on current progress, elapsed time, and estimated remaining run time.
• Provides notification & suggestion in cases of paging (query-subgrouping) by the server.
• Provides termination indication & suggestion (for recovery) when the server failed.
• Provides detailed 'HELP' and 'HINT' dialogs in response to corresponding hotlinks strategically placed next to input fields that may need explanations or suggestion.

Instructions

1. Navigate to the "Specify Data" tab. Drag and drop a Patient Set and one or more concepts (ontology terms) onto the appropriate input boxes:
   • Enter appropriate values in the 'Starting Patient' and 'Number of Patients' fields that are then presented, to specify the subset of the patient set to use. Also specify at the 'Query Subgroup Size' field the size of smaller queries of subgroups of patients to be used iteratively, to facilitate reducing the risks of overwhelming the server (i2b2 hive).
   • Click on the corresponding 'HELP' hotlinks next to the 'Starting Patient' and 'Number of Patients' fields, and the'HELP' hotlink next to the 'Query Subgroup Size' field, for detailed information; and enter corresponding appropriate values.
   • Click on the corresponding 'HINT' hotlink below the 'Concepts' field for hint or suggestion for selecting concepts.
2. Finally, select the "View Results" tab to wait for and view the generated demographic histograms.