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Getting Started

A tutorial for launching your first project and manipulating data

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will see how to:


  • Launch a project that's already installed
  • Visualize data and concepts from a dataset
  • Organize data by creating tabs and widgets

At the end of this tutorial, you will have a dashboard allowing you to visualize data from 100 patients.

You must have previously installed and launched LinkR.

Project Launch

When installing LinkR, the following were installed:

  • A project (LinkR Demo), allowing you to visualize patient records and obtain a dashboard of aggregated data
  • A dataset (MIMIC-IV Demo), with data from 100 patients admitted to intensive care

To launch the project, click on it directly from the home page (LinkR Demo Project).

Two things then happen:

  • The data from the 100 patients are loaded
  • The patient-level data pages (patient records) and aggregated pages (statistics or visualizations on groups of patients) are displayed as configured in the project

You arrive at the project’s home page:

You have information about:

  • the project (author, creation date…)
  • the data contained in the project: here we see that we have data from 100 patients, corresponding to 852 stays
  • a description of the project when available

To access patient records, click on the “Patient-level Data” icon.

You will see dropdown menus on the left side of the screen: Subset, Patient, and Stay.

Select the subset “All patients”, and any patient.

You will then see the patient’s stays. Here we see an emergency room visit, followed by an intensive care stay and a transfer to a medical unit.

Note the tabs at the top right of the screen, which allow you to organize the medical record.

Click on the “Haemodynamics” tab to access data concerning the patient’s hemodynamics.

Here we have three widgets:

  • A widget that displays hemodynamic data as a timeline
  • A widget that displays this same data as a table
  • A widget that displays the treatments received by the patient

You can click on a part of the first figure to zoom in on a period. This will update the other widgets to display data for the period selected in the first widget.

If you change patients, the data will also be updated.

Note at the top of the page, next to the loaded project name, three icons:

  • The first (person icon) allows you to display the patient-level data page
  • The second (multiple people icon) displays the aggregated data page
  • The third (list icon) allows you to explore the concepts used in the dataset

Click on the second icon to go to the aggregated data page, where we will see a dashboard with information about the selected patients.

Last step of this overview, click on the third icon, the concepts one.

In the “Terminology” dropdown menu, select “All terminologies”.

You will then see all the concepts available in the dataset chosen for this project.

If you click on a concept, you will see its details, including its distribution.

Let's summarize:


  • A project allows you to organize data in a certain way
  • The patient-level data page allows you to visualize patient data record by record
  • The aggregated data page allows you to visualize data from a group of patients
  • The concepts page allows you to explore the concepts used in a dataset

We will now see how to create a tab and a widget ourselves!

Creating a Tab and a Widget

Let’s go back to the patient-level data page (remember, with the person icon at the top of the screen).

We’re going to create a Respiratory tab, in which we’ll create a widget to display vital signs related to the patient’s ventilation.

Click on the “+ Tab” icon at the top left of the screen.

An “Add a tab” menu appears. Name it “Respiratory” and validate.

Once on this tab, click on the + Widget icon.

We will have three things to do:

  • Choose a name for the widget
  • Choose a plugin to select how to display the data (as we’ve seen: timeline, table, or other)
  • Choose the concepts to display

When you click on “Select a plugin”, you will get the list of available plugins.

To display a plugin’s description, click on the “Information” icon.

You will then get a description of the plugin’s features, which allows you to know if this is the plugin you need to display data as you wish.

If this plugin suits you, close the description and click on the plugin.

Finally, let’s choose the concepts to display by clicking on “Select concepts”.

For the example, we’re going to choose the LOINC terminology in the dropdown menu.

Choose the concepts:

  • Respiratory rate
  • Oxygen saturation in Arterial blood by Pulse oxymetry

Click on “Validate” to confirm the concept selection, then on “Add” to create the widget.

Choose the concepts to display in the dropdown menu, then click on “Show figure” to the left of the widget.

By clicking on “Edit page” on the left side of the screen, you can resize the widget.

Conclusion

We have therefore:


  • Created a tab "Respiratory" to visualize the patient's respiratory data
  • Created a widget with the "Timeline continuous var." plugin to display the patient's respiratory rate and saturation

For more information on creating widgets, go to this page.

To understand LinkR's structure in more detail, go to the next page of the documentation.