About

Starting Semester: Fall 2023
Assigned: No
Location: Atlanta

Shepherd Center

Client Profile

Shepherd Center is a private, not-for profit hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1975, the 152-bed hospital focuses on the medical treatment, research and rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury and disease, acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain and other neuromuscular problems. Shepherd Center is ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the top 10 rehabilitation hospitals in the nation.

Project Description

Development of a Clinician Dashboard to facilitate access to the National Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems database



Project objective

The objective of this project is to design a dashboard to allow Shepherd Center clinicians and researchers to make SCIMS database queries and access the results.



The National SCIMS Database has been in existence since 1973 and captures data from an estimated 6% of new SCI cases in the U.S. Since its inception, 31 federally funded SCI Model Systems have contributed data to the National SCIMS Database. To assure comparability of data acquired by personnel in various centers, rigid scientific criteria have been established for the collection, management and analysis of information entered into the database.



Project Impact

This useful tool will be used by a variety of Shepherd Center clinicians and staff to investigate to answer myriad data-driven questions concerning the causes, care and outcomes of persons with SCI. With the approval of Georgia Tech, Shepherd Center will disseminate the availability of this tool to other SCI Model Systems for their use and benefit



Project criteria

- A standalone web- or cloud-based application that can be accessed through any Shepherd computer system (this criterion can be discussed to evaluate various options)

- A useable and intuitive interface that permits users to select fields of interest and ranges of interest to perform queries

- Offer the ability to calculate parametric statistics of database fields

- Offer the ability to cross-tabulate 2 or more data fields within a query

- Download query results in a format able to be used for further analysis

- Inclusion of information screens that list the data fields and their definitions

- Inclusion of information screens that instruct users in how to make queries

Skills

Creativity; working knowledge of user-centered design principles; creation of a user-interface to perform data analysis