Getting Started with your OrthoWave Data Base

20 Feb 2010

You have heard about OrthoWave in good words? Excellent… You have tested, analyzed, compared, assessed the various outcomes studies softwares in Arthroplasty, and the final choice is… OrthoWave! Congratulations and thanks for putting your confidence in us… Welcome aboard!

Based upon a practical way, too often prospective Users do not really know how and where they can purchase the Software, and then while receiving their access codes as Administrator of their own database (DB), get a bit lost at the time they have to settle it appropriately…

We have thus designed for you these two tutorials, devoted respectively for the first one to the means of purchasing on line the OrthoWave software suite, and for the second to setting up the prospective DB of your own, as being its Administrator. Of course, would you receive an access code as a User of an OW existing database, no specific setting is requested from your side, and you just have to be in touch with your “Local Administrator”… However, you might get interest in discovering this tutorial anyway. After all, maybe soon you will feel the call of run your own data base ?

1 – Buying OrthoWave on line

This first tutorial describes how through the www.orthowave.netsite, you have first to create a personal OW account, then get access to the “OrthoWave on line store”… The first step consists in selecting the number of surgeons whose patients’ data will be inputted in the prospective DB, which determine in fact the price of the software suite.

Please notice that the definition of “Surgeons” is important within the OrthoWave organization… The so-called “Surgeon” is the one whose patients belong to the database, be him or not the “Operator”. The Operator is the one who performed the surgery, and generally this operator is the same person as the surgeon… However, in some cases, and namely in Hospitals, Operators can be Residents, or temporary Assistants who will stay in the department only a few years, while the follow-up is supposed to remain efficient in the long run… In such cases, it seems relevant to link the surgery to the Operator as performing the surgery, and to the Surgeon who will follow-up the arthroplasty, as being in charge of the patient during the whole period of time in the Department, be this Surgeon the Chief of Department, or any other Professor or permanent Doctor. On a practical means, while ordering the software, logically the number of surgeons who will really have their own patients in the DB all along the follow-up of arthroplasties must be indicated. By the way, based upon privacy concerns, it must be said that a given “User” who will be linked to a given “Surgeon” (or to several ones) will get access only to the Patient forms “belonging” to this given surgeon (or these ones). To make short, all patient data will be grouped upon their surgeon’s name, and it is thus mandatory to make this sorting by surgeons efficient to limit access to the only forms which are linked to him.

On the other hand, the number of “Users” of the Data Base is not limited, and these various users will get “linked” to one or several surgeons of the DB, and thus get access only to the Surgeon’s Patient forms (or Surgeons’ ones), upon their specific rights as defined by their Administrator (full rights, or read only, anonymously or not).

Once the number of prospective surgeons in the DB indicated, and the type of DB duly notified (Regular RDB or de-identified Scientific SDB), The next step consists in reading carefully and ticking off the boxes appropriately for the three following agreements, as first the “End User Licensing Agreement”, secondly the “Privacy Agreement as Administrator of an Health Data Base”, and thirdly the “General conditions of Sales”. Payment can be done either par secured on line purchase, or by bank transfer, after having indicated the billing details.

Once the registration duly validated, your Data base will be created, and an email indicating your access codes as the Administrator will be sent to you as well… It will be time for setting up your Data Base!

2 – Setting up your OW Data Base

The “customization” of the DB starts with registration of Surgeons, Operators and Reviewers of the Medical Staff. Apart from the First and Last Names, a Pseudonym must be linked to each name, in order for surgeons’ identity to remain de-identified while sending forms to shared scientific databases SDBs. Then similarly, Institutions details must be inputted.

A critical step consists in creating the Users accounts to precisely define who is authorized to enter the DB, and get access to specific Patient forms, upon the three levels previously defined ( full rights, read only and read only anonymously). Each User will be then “linked” to one or several Surgeons, and this User will be only allowed to get access to the patients forms that “belong” to this or these Surgeons. This procedure is fancy, versatile and efficient, while staying under the absolute control of the Administrator.

Another important step regards the “customization” of the Data Base, while selecting the various specific items to be displayed during the use of this “local” DB. It mainly concerns the various components of the prostheses, for both hip and knee arthroplasty, by editing a “local” list of components from either the components of the “global catalogue”, or the specific implants of one’s own, simply added to this list… Only the selected implants which belong to this “local” list will be shown while inputting data through the User section.

Same procedures of selection of items from either the global catalogue or personal items, will be performed for editing the various key-words applied to Hip and Knee modules, i.e. 5 groups of key-words: Patients, Images, Previous Conditions, Complications, and Additional Procedures… This menu item allows as well for setting up the default values to be used as shortcuts for surgical reports, and for directly editing 200 “custom” fields (i.e. 50 customized items and 50 customized evaluations upon the Hip module and as much upon the Knee one). These customized fields can be created without any specific development and get immediately linked to statistics, multicriteria searches and exports…

Then from the “Settings” menu bar, a selection must be done within the proposed scoring systems to define what assessments and questionnaires will be shown on the menu bar of the User section. OrthoWave allows for using quite all current official scoring systems, however whether you will only use HHS and Oxford assessments for Hip survey, it seems not relevant to display in addition SF12, Womac, HOOS!… This window also allows for choosing some side options as showing help balloons, units of measurement, or other specific choices for this DB.

The “Log” item of the “TOOLS” menu bar has not to be set up… It refers to the “audit trail” procedure, which will automatically, all along the use of the Data Base, keep stamped traceability of each creation, import of image, or modification on any form, with name and reference of the User and access rights to the DB data.

Hopefully, these two tutorials would allow each prospective Administrator of any OW database for easier and fancier conditions for getting started… In case of any additional request or question, it remains strongly recommended to directly address the OrthoWave hot line by phone (0033321531949), email at info@orthowave.net , or of course via the “contact” section of this www.orthowave.net web site.

Soon be in touch then for setting up your database… Be sure we will do more than our very best for you and your whole staff being more and more comfortable while running this outcome study tool !…