Tech Talk

DUSTER is designed to collect data for a patient in a specific timeframe. The system requires the research team to provide their cohort info, namely, MRNs and associated dates. The associated dates, e.g. study enrollment date, tells DUSTER what time point to look forward from to find study data.

Once you have defined a data collection window (i.e. a REDCap form), you add clinical data to it.

The question is: which of the potentially many readings within the data collection window should be captured?

The answer is to specify one or more selection strategies. 

For lab results and vitals, the strategies are min, max, first, and last. 

DUSTER operates at Stanford Medicine courtesy of STARR, the research-ready clinical data warehouse that already accelerates many research projects. The system consists of two main components, the user interface, DUSTER, and the server, known as “REDCap to STARR Link” (R2SL), that fetches the data. 

REDCap’s DDP also permits retrieval of clinical variables, but users are forced to manually adjudicate each and every variable, a process nearly as time consuming and error prone as chart review. DUSTER on the other hand has built-in auto-adjudication algorithms that are used to automatically select exactly one or zero results from the time frame associated with the form.

STARR Tools and STARR OMOP deliver clinical data for research, but not to REDCap directly, and in a format that needs extensive further work before you can build an analysis-ready dataset from it.  DUSTER on the other hand can produce analysis-ready data in REDCap after just a few minutes of configuration.

REDCap To STARR Link can also be used to set up clinical data delivery to a REDCap project, but doing so can be expensive, as it requires custom consultation. DUSTER on the other hand is self-service, so any associated costs are fixed and likely to be nominal.

DUSTER truly is a uniquely powerful accelerator for clinical research at Stanford Medicine.