Implementing the Canadian Apheresis Registry: A programmer's point of view

Many articles in today's medical journals, including this very publication, support their findings by providing data collected during the research of their selected study. Various terms used include a randomized group of patients, outcome data, total counts and averages. Many of these terms are then supported by figures and tables depicted by line graphs, bar graphs and histograms. The question to answer is how was all this data gathered? The following discussion will attempt to explain, in simple terms, how the data entry and collection was implemented for the Canadian Apheresis Registry database.