- Background
- Objective
- Tools and Packages
- Results
I was the previous Data Coordinator for the Ontario Birth Study, a prospective cohort study embedded in clinical practice at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Birthing parents <17 weeks gestational age (GA) are recruited by the study, and followed into early postpartum (6-10 weeks).
Study data is collected in the form of 3 lifestyle and 2 diet questionnaires, in addition to abstraction of clinical records from patient charts. Lifestyle questionnaires are hosted on REDCap, and are sent to mothers enrolled in the study at 11 weeks GA, 28 weeks GA, and 6 weeks postpartum.
Manual questionnaire sendout would be impractical, so a programming approach was required.
Design a script that does the following:
- Filter patients based on exclusion criteria (terminations, withdrawals, no future contact, etc.)
- Calculate patient GA to determine if survey should be administered
- Check if survey has been completed, and send reminders at 2 week intervals, for a maximum of 3 reminders
- Send out surveys and passwords to enrolled patients at appropriate times
- Update SQL database with survey completion/reminder
- Send notification email to OBS Staff indicating completion + summary of completed and sent out surveys.
- Calculate EPDS Score (a tool used to measure postnatal depression) and flag patients with scores >= 13, or a response other than "Never" to questions about self-harm
- Notify OBS Staff if patient has been flagged on EPDS scale
- Back up database and delete oldest backup.
Upon my exit from OBS in Feb 2022, the script was still used to complete the above tasks!