Context-sensitive clinical data integration

Abstract

Current methods for data integration are as difficult to use as they are powerful. Motivated by our work with clinical data and the people who analyze it, we present two components that allow non-technical users that are domain experts to create and reuse complex data integration processes. The GUAVA (GUI As View Apparatus) component enables data analysts to make informed data integration decisions based on detailed accounts of the user interface that was used to generate the data. The MultiClass component allows analysts to revisit decisions made for prior studies and reuse them or not each time the data is used. We describe these two components with examples where a warehouse of clinical data is used to support research studies. We describe the state of our implementation and why we believe the two components can be automatically translated into ETL workflows. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.