title: A Large-Scale Informatics Database to Advance Research and Discovery of the Effects of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
abstract: Clinical research advances in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and behavioral health have always been restricted by the quantity and quality of the data as well as the difficulty of collecting standardized clinical elements. Those barriers, together with the complexity of evaluating TBI, have resulted in serious challenges for clinicians, researchers, and organizations interested in analyzing the short- and long-term effects of TBI. In an effort to raise awareness about existing and cost-effective ways to collect clinical data within the Department of Defense, this article describes some of the steps taken to quickly build a large-scale informatics database to facilitate collection of standardized clinical data and obtain trends of the longitudinal outcomes of service members diagnosed with mild TBI. The database was built following the Defense of Health Agency guidelines and currently has millions of longitudinal clinical data points, Department of Defense-wide clinical data for service members diagnosed with mild TBI to support population studies, and multiple built-in analytical applications to enable interactive data exploration and analysis.
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Jesus J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Caban
authors.affiliation: Information Delivery Branch, Defense Health Agency, Falls Church, VA 22042.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bonnema
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Eddy R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Bueno
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: DeGraba
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Geoff
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Grammer
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Greenhalgh
authors.affiliation: National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kass
mesh_terms: D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis; D000070642:Brain Injuries, Traumatic / Q000145:classification / Q000150:complications*; D003628:Database Management Systems / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D048088:Informatics / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D012107:Research Design / Q000639:trends