King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSH&RC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is implementing the SuperSTAR analysis and dissemination software to allow research and public use of health care data about diseases such as Congenital Heart Defects and Diabetes. Researchers can gain insights from analysis of trends from confidentialized microdata records. The hospital can share privacy protected data with the public and use this data to promote awareness and understanding of diseases that could affect people’s lives.
The Registries Core Facility Group within the department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Scientific Computing at KFSH&RC has the mission to provide high quality disease registries, analysis and administration of the registry information, and leadership in establishing the registries in collaboration with other health organizations in the region. Researchers expect analysis of the registry data to lead to better understanding of the causes and effects of diseases like diabetes, which is a growing concern within the Kingdom and elsewhere worldwide.
Dr. Sultan Al-Sedairy, Executive Director of the Research Center at KFSH&RC stated, “My vision is to have a medium that will allow Public access to visualizations of analyses that promote health care education. We want to understand the actions that affect the control measures associated with the spread of disease”. This vision allowed the collaboration with Space Time Research and MIS, providing easy access to health research statistics using SuperSTAR technology. John Ellenberger, Vice-President Statistical Solutions at Space-Time Research noted, “We are pleased to be associated with Dr. Al-Sedairy’s vision and believe it will not only provide self-service public access to health data but will also reduce the cost of internal KFSH&RC resources. Users will have confidentialized access to the data they need without requiring manual efforts to provide it.”
Ms. Shazia Naz Subhani, Head-Registries Core Facility, said, “The first registries that have been designated for the SuperVIEW platform by the BESC IT team include Congenital Heart Defects, Saudi National Diabetes, Breast Cancer as well as the Epilepsy Registry. We are pleased to be working with Space-Time Research to accelerate our understanding of these diseases and to provide the public with information they can use to improve healthcare and avoid diseases. The Registries Core Facility will be able to develop and disseminate hospital-based as well as regional disease registries in Saudi Arabia. It is important for the Hospital and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to have high quality, easy to use disease and health information.”
The system will include confidentialization, tabulation, and dissemination using SuperWEB and public access and transparency using SuperVIEW. Integration with ESRI ArcGIS 10 will provide geospatial analysis and public mapping visualization for what will be a world-class registry project. Al Moammar Information Systems Co., (MIS), will provide the geospatial knowledge and complete the installation and support. Moufid Charafeddine of MIS said, “We look forward to the integration of the SuperSTAR tabulation and dissemination system with ArcGIS 10 from ESRI to deliver a very important outcome for the Kingdom. King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Center is an authority in disease registries and we are pleased to be working with KFSH&RC and the stakeholders in the health sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia towards their ambitious disease and health management goals”
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