Online Program

Working in HIPPA-compliant environments with large datasets: Pepper Informatics

Keywords: data management, HIPPA

Pepper Informatics (Pi) is a data management system designed for observational studies and clinical trials. Pi is used for computerized data collection, batch data entry, scheduling and subject tracking; and is particularly suited to studies for which web-based data collection and/or data entry is infeasible or inefficient. The main components are a data provider, a form designer, an application generator, a synchronization utility optimized for asymmetric commercial networks, and a SAS code generator. The provider database can be Microsoft SQL Server (recommended for HIPAA-compliant environments) or Microsoft Access. Pi’s data provider includes metadata and data. A project is organized as a tree of arbitrary depth pointing to Project, Form, Form Version, Question Group and Question objects that are saved to libraries for reuse by other projects. Internal data structures are based on Entity-Attribute Value (EAV) architecture and are static. Generated SAS code is used to create SAS data marts for use by data analysts and data managers. Pi was developed at Yale under NIA grant #P30AG21342, and is available at no cost.