MTUP 230221: Spilling the Tea on Big Health Data: HCUP, Wastewater, EPIC, NIS, REDCap, and More!
Channel: Monika Wahi
Date: 2023-02-26

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This meetup was recorded February 21, 2023.

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Theme music by CJ Hutchings, used with permission: https://dethwench.com/cjhutchings/ 

Timestamps and links as they come up are below:
00:00:55 Beth will work with CDC wastewater data. 
📕See article: Spurbeck, R. R., Minard-Smith, A. T., & Catlin, L. A. (2021). Applicability of neighborhood and building scale wastewater-based genomic epidemiology to track the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and other pathogens. MedRxiv, 2021-02. Available here: https://buff.ly/3m6Z68K 
00:02:44 Monika talks about the challenge of thinking about “sampling” when you are looking at a body of water vs. sampling human beings
00:03:35 Structure of lab datasets
00:04:42 Monika talks about the difference between an “automated” data dictionary and a human readable one, and the miscommunication that can happen on a team about this.
📕Article about REDCap: da Silva, K. R., Costa, R., Crevelari, E. S., Lacerda, M. S., de Moraes Albertini, C. M., Filho, M. M., ... & Barros, J. V. (2013). Glocal clinical registries: pacemaker registry design and implementation for global and local integration–methodology and case study. PloS one, 8(7), e71090. Available here: https://buff.ly/3Ix7lT9 
00:06:00 Monika shows her trick for documenting connection between front-end and back-end.
💡This topic is fully covered in Monika’s free online course, “Understanding Research Forms, Surveys and Instruments”: https://buff.ly/3eTtiOw 
00:08:00 Beth provides clarification on the research questions in the wastewater space
00:09:30 Monika goes over the logical challenges of using wastewater parameters to predict or track human health
00:11:20 Mika points the group to the San Diego Epidemiology and Research for COVID Health (SEARCH) Project: https://buff.ly/3JeOWdA
We discuss – how do you really visualize these? Probably the best place to start is time series visualizations.
00:16:30 The group reviews the SEARCH dashboard, and talks about how it can inform Beth’s analysis.
00:20:39 Q. Has anyone here used HCUP before? A. Mika created it! She says it’s clean!
💾 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP): https://buff.ly/3kpDt35 
00:24:15 Sakib mentions EPIC – Monika explains how EPIC works differently than the HCUP (actually, how they are related).
00:28:55 Sakib describes the problem of running the HCUP Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) on SAS Studio, due to I/O issues. Should we migrate to Viya?
00:30:55 Strategies for getting around I/O problems with big datasets like the NIS.
📕 SAS white paper about Program Data Vector (PDV): https://buff.ly/33iKxCS