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MeDB Description

• History
• Overview
• Structure
• Technical data and system requisites
  

History

MeDb was initially developed to support the research activities of a group of italian doctors involved in studying Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. What they need was a flexible database to store partially structured medical data useful to understand the effects of the genetic diseases typical of Wolf-Hirschhorn syndome.

Overview

MeDB is an unstructured database engine, designed to contain medical data related to patients affected by multi-genic rare deseases. It can be easily extended to other medical areas where a large and complex set of clinical data must be collected.

MeDB provides a reliable support to medical research and clinical trial, allowing to perform complex queries on the database by correlating all data of all the patient’s data.

MeDB allows to properly customize the data structure according to the specific needs of the customer and to the specific goals that the use of the database should allow to reach. 

Structure

The database structure allows to define a clinical picture of a given case through the use of a Case File. Each Case File is defined through the use of different Clinical Compartments (i.e. a detailled description of the patient is given according the different clinical areas, the Compartments, such as  Neurological, Endocrinological, Psychological etc.). Each Compartment is described by a Frame. Each Frame is a particular medical area; each of them has been configured in the frame of a collaboration with the Scientific Committee of several Parent’s Association of Rare Genetic Syndromes.

Each Frame is structured in a way to contain the description of:

• a set of parameters able to represent the most relevant information on that specific area;
• a set of anomalies
• a set of malformations
• a set of data in form of table
• a set of data in form of photo, video and/or other multimedia formats.

All Frame data are indexed; this allows the Search Engine to select, through the use of all boolean operators (AND, OR etc.) all Case Files containing (or not containing) the presence of one (or more) data.

fig.1 Page of Case Files. The Case Files are anonymous through a correspondence code known only by the owner of the database. The different fields contain the most relevant information on the patient and the date of the last File modification. The example is taken from the specific customization produced for the International Association of Ring14 Syndrome.

fig.2 Summary of the different Frames each Case File is composed of. The example is taken from the specific customization produced for the International Association of Ring14 Syndrome.

fig.3 Typical structure of a Frame (in the example, that related to the Genetic assessment of the patient) Each field is indexed which can be easily recalled by the database search engine. The example is taken from the specific customization produced for the International Association of Ring14 Syndrome.

MeDB can be easily customized to include further Frames and/or to modify the content of the current Frames, as a function of the user needs

MeDB combines:

• an user.friendly interface enabling data input;
• a Server interface which allows the insertion of the data, generated by the user interface, into the database;
• a web interface which allows, upon identification, to look up data and perform database queries.

Technical data and system requisites

MeDB has been realized by using standard XML and thus it does not require further database engines. MeDB installation requires the installation of Microsoft®.NET Framework Version 1.1 Redistributable Package which, in turn, requires the following minimal system’s prerequisites:

It is highly recommended to install the latest service packs and the critical updates available for the corresponding Microsoft® Windows® version.