Re: Computer advice needed for medical research project

[Tuan V Nguyen <t.nguyen@garvan.unsw.edu.au>]

Hi anh Tri, Huy and folks,

        From my point of view, MS Access is principally designed for
business purposes. There are issues/problems in scientific studies and
particularly in medicine in which business softwares can not handle. For
example, in medical research, there are missing values and some business
softwares such as Access or Excel will code this as zero. Now, in science,
zero is different from a dot (.) and if one is going to do number crunching,
which anh Huy will sure be, then this coding will give wrong answer. I am
not sure whether they (Microsoft) have fixed this problem, but that was what
I experienced many years ago.

        Cheers,

        Tuan

At 05:51 PM 4/22/97 -0500, you wrote:
>If you are familiar with windows enviroment, Microsoft acces if good for
>doing your work, I think.
>
>
>----------
>> From: huy.duong@ctsu.ox.ac.uk
>> To: Multiple recipients of list <vnsa-l@csd.uwm.edu>
>> Subject: Computer advice needed for medical research project
>> Date: Monday, April 21, 1997 11:15 PM
>> 
>> Dear friends,
>> 
>> In the Red River Delta, 90% of children are infected by intestinal worms.
>> Intestinal worms may adversely affect development. Primary school
>children are 
>> infected most severely. Primary school children are also at crucial
>stages in 
>> their physical, mental and educational developments.
>> 
>> The Partnership for Child Development at Oxford University is setting
>> up medical trial to measure the benefits of killing intestinal worms
>> and educational measures in school children in the Red River Delta.
>> This trial will need to store data on age, height, weight, the level of
>> some nutrients in blood, scores of cognitive tests, time to re-infection,
>> etc, for children in either 100 schools (consisting of 80,000 children)
>or 100 
>> sub-district (consisting of 800,000) children. The data is to be analysed
>by SAS 
>> or SPSS.
>> 
>> Computer experts, what hardware, software and personel would you
>recommend
>> for data entry and maintenance?
>> 
>> Also, if a health institute in Hanoi (the one that is running the vitamin
>A and 
>> iodine programme) gives, say, worm medicine to some schools, a vitamin to
>
>> some others, worm medicine + vitamin to the rest, do the schools
>> have the ability and the will to administer the stuff or to the children?
>> If the schools are in the same sub-district, will the sub-distric
>authority or 
>> school demand that all get the worm medicine or all get the vitamin?    
>> 
>> Many thanks in advance.
>> 
>> Huy
>> 
>>  
>> 
>
>