A data cube modeling method for longitudinal cohort study

Abstract

Longitudinal cohort study is an effective way to probe into the risk factors of disease and evaluate intervention measures. It has gradually become the mainstream research method in precision medicine, chronic disease management and evidence-based education, and has been deployed in many National Science and Technology Major Projects, which established its specialized cohorts for natural populations, chronic diseases, specialized diseases. The quality of data is a make-or-break factor of longitudinal cohort study. The subjects and test tasks in longitudinal cohort study have dynamic changes over time, and the data generated involves multiple modalities and scales. Therefore, exploring how to model business-oriented longitudinal cohort data will contribute to a unified understanding and governance of longitudinal cohort data, and ultimately improve data quality. On the one hand, because different modal data in longitudinal cohort study have different dimensional indicators, it is difficult to carry out data modeling based on unified dimensional indicators through simple dimensional splicing; on the other hand, the needs of the longitudinal cohort management scenario determine the calculations should be focused on the granularity of individual subjects and data modal types. Considering the above, the traditional multi-dimensional data modeling method based on data dimension indicators and their measurements as basic elements couldn’t be fully adapted to the counting and statistical requirements under the longitudinal cohort scenarios. This paper proposes a data cube model based on MOLAP named SubTaP, which take multimodal data objects as basic granularity. This model constructs a cube structure with three dimensions of Subject, Task and Phase. It can be applied to meet the visualization requirements of longitudinal cohort management scenario and guide the construction of a data information platform for cohort study. At the same time, it helps to build a unified understanding of longitudinal cohort study data among data generators, cohort maintainers, and data users.