2001 — The "Big Data" Frontier: Learning to Work with Data in the Corporate Data Warehouse

Gonsoulin ME, VA Information Resource Center; Brown R, San Francisco VA Medical Center; Olsen MK, Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care; Souden ML, VA Information Resource Center;

Workshop Objectives:
The VA's Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW) organizes and makes available large amounts of clinical, administrative and financial data that can inform a new understanding of health outcomes, patterns and impacts. These data simultaneously represent tremendous opportunities and significant challenges for health services researchers. New users face a relatively steep learning curve in using relational data and SQL environments, and even more experienced users continually need to refine their skills in order to tackle the myriad of decisions related to methods and measurement of these diverse data. This workshop provides both conceptual and practical insight related to using CDW data for research, bringing the HSRandD community together for collective navigation of this new terrain.

Activities:
This workshop will have three components that move from the didactic to the experiential to the interactive: 1.VIReC's Data Knowledge Lead will present a brief conceptual overview of the structure and content of the VHA CDW and key concepts associated with SQL. 2.Two HSRandD researchers will present their experiences in using the CDW in their work, highlighting lessons learned and best practices for working with CDW. 3.Finally, there will be a question and answer section engaging the audience in a conversation about their experiences using CDW.

Target Audience:
This workshop aims to speak to a wide range of researchers. We expect new users would benefit from the conceptual overview section, intermediate users would learn from the research use cases and experienced users could contribute their collective wisdom in the question and answer section.

Assumed Audience Familiarity with Topic:
Designed to appeal to an audience that is generally familiar with VA data but has a broad range of experience with CDW.