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Unfortunately, the vast amounts of medical research data is collected and stored in Excel "databases". Yes, you heard that right - Excel. The very studies that
by dr1337 14y ago
Unfortunately, the vast amounts of medical research data is collected and stored in Excel "databases". Yes, you heard that right - Excel. The very studies that we use to inform clinical practice that we do when you get sick and come into hospitals are pretty summed up by that comic.
- mediaman 14y agoI have a friend who works on some of those medical research studies. They are required to use Excel. It is a giant pain because it is difficult to share the spreadsheet, there's constantly different versions, and data corruption issues. All of the staff want to switch to an Access database that they can all access within the office (it would not be a complicated DB and they happen to know how to use Access). But a senior manager on the project believes that the study board only approved Excel, when the study was originally approved years ago, so, therefore, they cannot now use Access. This costs them tens of hours per week across the team.
- uslic001 14y agoBack in the early 90's I was doing medical research and they used Access and/or Excel in almost every study I was involved in. The amount of time spent cleaning up the data before it could be used was insane. I tried to get them to use a real database but it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Sounds like things have not changed in over 20 years.