Data Warehouse to Support Clinical Trials in Dentistry.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Clinical Research Data Management

Background:

• Digitalization in clinical research necessitates robust data integration and quality-checking infrastructure.
• Managing large volumes of complex clinical data, particularly periodontal data, presents significant challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and present a relational data warehouse (DW) specifically for collecting and managing periodontal clinical data.
• To establish a structured data model centered around a 'Patient' table for efficient data organization.

Main Methods:

• Development of a relational data warehouse (DW) architecture.
• Implementation of a core 'Patient' table with linked related tables for comprehensive data storage.
• Utilizing appropriate relationships to connect different clinical information tables.

Main Results:

• Successful design of a relational data warehouse for periodontal clinical data.
• Demonstrated effectiveness of the DW using 95 real-world records from the Gum-Gut Project.
• The DW structure facilitated the integration and organization of data from periodontitis patients and controls.

Conclusions:

• The proposed relational data warehouse provides a viable infrastructure for integrating and quality-checking periodontal clinical data.
• The DW design, with its central 'Patient' table and relational links, is effective for managing complex clinical datasets.
• This approach supports efficient data handling in digitalized clinical research, as evidenced by the Gum-Gut Project data.