Phynx: an open source software solution supporting data management and web-based patient-level data review for drug safety studies in the general practice research database and other health care databases

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a software solution that supports management and clinical review of patient data from electronic medical records databases or claims databases for pharmacoepidemiological drug safety studies.

Methods: We used open source software to build a data management system and an internet application with a Flex client on a Java application server with a MySQL database backend. The application is hosted on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. This solution named Phynx supports data management, Web-based display of electronic patient information, and interactive review of patient-level information in the individual clinical context. This system was applied to a dataset from the UK General Practice Research Database (GPRD).

Results: Our solution can be setup and customized with limited programming resources, and there is almost no extra cost for software. Access times are short, the displayed information is structured in chronological order and visually attractive, and selected information such as drug exposure can be blinded. External experts can review patient profiles and save evaluations and comments via a common Web browser.

Conclusions: Phynx provides a flexible and economical solution for patient-level review of electronic medical information from databases considering the individual clinical context. It can therefore make an important contribution to an efficient validation of outcome assessment in drug safety database studies.