Cardiopulmonary exercise testing data processing and storage tools

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT Conducting a clinical study is a complex and challenging task, so using technology to facilitate the process is necessary for the medical and scientific community. Data digitization is needed to store and process it. Digitization speeds up data visualization techniques so scientists can analyze it most effectively depending on their goals. In this project, we developed two digital tools related to the cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) data, one for digitizing PDF reports and the other for generating databases. The latter was a web-based database visualization dashboard. Users can select parameters of interest and check for differences among subgroups. Basic statistical tests are performed for each variable under analysis, and its results are presented in numerical and graphical formats. The initial statistical tests and the derived recommendation will guide the research team in deeper statistical analysis and robust analysis supporting more decisive conclusions. We ended up with the first version for both tools and validated it using patients' CPET data from the Dante Pazzanese Institute of Cardiology. We conducted a pilot study to verify if the tools served their purpose and observed that both programs worked as planned. The tools can be further tailored to be clinically or research-oriented. On the analysis of CPET's results, the conclusions for our example study were in line with what is presented in the bibliography for cardiorespiratory physiology.