Q&A with Assistant Professor of Medicine and Senior Clinician Investigator, Dr. Johnathan Mack
Customer Highlight
Q&A with Dr. Johnathan Mack
Accelerating projects with dynamic, self-serve access to broad, institutional clinical data.
“As a clinician and a researcher, MDClone has accelerated my ability to obtain clinical data to inform study design and analysis.””
Q: HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT MDCLONE?
The Ottawa Hospital began using MDClone in September 2020. My colleague was engaged early on with the project team as a subject matter expert. When the system became live, he reached out to me to suggest I get access to MDClone and participate as one of the first investigators.
The timing was great because the project team launched an innovation challenge in October to promote MDClone and invite investigators to submit ideas around projects that were focused on access to care. We submitted an idea and completed our training online, within a couple short weeks we started our exploration in MDClone and found that the system was a good fit for a project that my team had in mind.
Q: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN USING MDCLONE?
I have been using MDClone for about five months, since November 2020. Most of my work on the system has been focused around a specific use case, however, now that I have access, I can use the tool to ask any question or query that I want to explore.
Q: HOW DOES MDCLONE IMPACT YOU AND YOUR ROLE?
As a clinician and a researcher, MDClone has accelerated my ability to obtain clinical data to inform study design and analysis. MDClone allows me to work more independently in acquiring data from our institutional clinical database and explore the feasibility of study questions. MDClone also gave me a better understanding of the data set that we were working with, which improved the analysis and interpretation of findings. It provided insider insight into the data that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Q: WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO MDCLONE?
MDClone is the only system at my organization that allows investigators and clinicians with dynamic self-serve access to broad institutional clinical data. I can get access to clinical data directly and immediately without waiting in a queue for a data file.
Q: WHAT VALUE HAS IT BROUGHT TO YOU AS A PHYSICIAN?
The project that we initiated focuses on preoperative anemia and using MDClone for the project has permitted a very quick mapping of the status quo at our institution. It has allowed us to identify patient groups with preoperative anemia to focus on for interventions at a hospital level.
MDClone allowed me the ability to work on my study on a timeline that I could control.
“MDClone is the only system at my organization that allows investigators and clinicians with dynamic self-serve access to broad institutional clinical data.””
Q: WHAT DOES SYNTHETIC DATA HELP YOU DO?
Synthetic data facilitates the speed with which research projects can be started and feasibility assessed. The synthetic data permits clinical data to be accessed at a much faster speed than would be possible otherwise, bypassing the need for Ethics board review. The data also allows greater certainty in the Ethics board review and actual data requests (if needed) as these processes are informed by what is seen in the synthetic data.
Q: WHAT TIME SAVINGS HAVE YOU REALIZED?
The use of synthetic data for this project in particular saved at least 3 months of time. We were able to query our database to determine what study variables were available and necessary, refine our data collection, and obtain a data set for analysis in 4-6 weeks. Without access to MDClone, the same project would have taken at least 4-6 months.
The use of synthetic data allowed me to explore my question freely without submitting research ethics board (REB) approvals. It also gave me the freedom to easily change and adapt my query as I explored the data.
KEY TAKEAWAY:
With minimal training and guidance from experts in data extraction, MDClone allowed our team to rapidly create a large data set that we used to inform our clinical study. With the right institutional infrastructure, MDClone is a powerful tool for clinical research and quality improvement.
featuring
Dr. Johnathan Mack
role
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Senior Clinician Investigator
Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine
user since
2020
applications
Research, patient information, synthetic data
organization
The Ottawa Hospital
University of Ottawa and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
location
Ottawa, Canada