Recent advances in technology have simplified the creation, collection, storage, and analysis of health care data. However, researchers and clinicians are still working to realize the potential of this data.

The UNC Program on Health and Clinical Informatics, NC TraCS Institute, and Program for Precision Medicine in Health Care are presenting a seminar series in May 2023 that will provide an introduction to working with electronic health care data.

Each Wednesday from May 10 through May 31, 2023 features a presentation from 2:30-4:00 p.m., followed by an in-person Q&A on your research project with NC TraCS analysts from 4:00-4:30 p.m.

Locations & Times
Wednesdays: May 10, 17, 24, and 31
Seminar: 2:30-4:00 p.m. in Brinkhous-Bullitt room 219 (2nd floor, in the NC TraCS suite) or via Zoom
Office Hours Q&A with NC TraCS analysts: 4:00-4:30 p.m. in-person only at Brinkhous-Bullitt room 219

Learning Objectives
Week 1: Understand the basics of how the US health care system generates data and how this data is stored in the EHR.
Week 2: Describe the code sets used to record health care data.
Week 3: Recognize the fundamental units of how health care data is organized in the EHR.
Week 4: Understand how to design a research question for clinical data. Identify resources at UNC that support clinical data research.

Audience: Graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and clinicians who are interested in research using clinical data from UNC's EHR system and the Carolina Data Warehouse

Topics Covered by Week

Week 1: May 10, 2:30-4:00 p.m. | Instructor: Peter Leese

Topics covered:

• Overview of how EHR works and history of EHR as billing system
• How health care data is generated
• Types of data & documentation used in patient care vs. billing
• Structured vs. Non-structured data
• EHR database schemas & OMOP vocabulary

Week 2: May 17, 2:30-4:00 p.m. | Instructor: Emily Pfaff

Topics covered:

• Clinical Terminologies
• Diagnoses & ICD codes
• Medications & lab data

Week 3: May 24, 2:30-4:00 p.m. | Instructors: Peter Leese & Emily Pfaff

Topics covered:

• Patient encounters – inpatient versus outpatient
• Bringing domains together: encounters and stuff that happens at the encounters
• How slightly different queries can yield vastly different results

          
Week 4: May 31, 2:30-4:00 p.m. | Instructors: Mike Adams & Anna Jojic

Topics covered:

• Elements and examples of a well-formed query
• Solicit analytical questions from participants. Instructor models how to write an analytical question in plain English and specify/define all nouns in the query
• How to build a robust query – how do you estimate costs
• Dos and don'ts in clinical data research
• Where to look things up
• Resources for getting started
• How to make the most of your time working with NC TraCS analysts

Questions? Email precisionmedicine@med.unc.edu