Clinical Data Mining Using Free Software: The Clinical Record

This workshop will demonstrate how to use free software, The Clinical Record, to record practical clinical data including interventions, outcomes, and clinical notes. Participants will learn how to use this application and how to export data for program evaluation. A demonstration analyzing exported data using R will be provided.

-Participants will be able to describe how The Clinical Record can be used to track clients for use in program evaluations.

-Participants will be able to explain how to download The Clinical Record, the freely available database, demonstrated in this workshop.

-Participants will be able to demonstrate how to export data from The Clinical Record in various formats so that they can be analyzed using qualitative and/or quantitative software.

Engaging in program evaluation is an essential component of good and responsible practice in social work practice. The importance of these activities cannot be overstated; the evidence-based practice movement has laid the groundwork for accountable practice in human service organizations with an eye toward assessing specific and measureable outcomes.

Despite this, many human service organizations do not have access to a systematic means for collecting and tracking meaningful client information. As a result, agency administrators and funders often have difficulty obtaining the information they need in order to determine the degree to which programs are effective.

The Clinical Record is a downloadable application the presenters developed to help human service organizations track and record client information. This application can be run on a Mac or PC. Data from The Clinical Record can be downloaded and imported into various software packages for evaluation purposes. The Clinical Record was designed specifically with human service organizations in mind. Consequently, data captured in this application are directed to be meaningful to agency practitioners and administrators. These can include, for example, demographic information, presenting problems, interventions, desired outcomes, diagnoses, community resources, and clinical notes. The application is customizable for specific practice settings.

In this workshop, participants will be taught how to download The Clinical Record. The presenters will demonstrate how to customize aspects of the application and enter data.

The presenters will also demonstrate how to export data for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. For qualitative analysis, data will be exported and formatted into Microsoft Word for later import into Atlas.ti or similar qualitative analytical software. For quantitative analysis, data will be exported into a format that can be imported into R, the increasingly popular, free, open source statistical programming language.

Participants will be provided with a link at the end of the workshop so that they may obtain all workshop materials.