Development and Application of a Software to Improve the Data Management of a Bone Marrow Transplant Service in a Brazilian Public Hospital

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Introduction The Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Service (HSCT) of the Amaral Carvalho Hospital began its activities in August 1996. At first, an Excell® spreadsheet was applied, in which all the information concerning the HSCT performed in our service were included. The use of this tool had the purpose of organizing the HSCT service information. In 2009, we started to send data to the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). Due to the beginning of this new activity and the large amount of information requested by CIBMTR, an improvement in the previously used platform was felt necessary. Today there are 12 Brazilian active centers in the CIBMTR. According to a recent CIBMTR report (info request #1807-14), our center has reported an average of 43% of all first transplants performed in Brazil and reported to the CIBMTR in the last 4 years. Objective Due the lack of resources for large investments in the technology information area as a public center, and the need to improve the tool in use, another software was proposed to speed up the data collection, to organize the internal database and to report the data to the CIBMTR. Materials and Methods In 2013 a database was developed in Access® (Microsoft® Office), containing all the information requested in the CIBMTR forms and necessary for the analysis and control of the Service results. After entering all the data, the program is able to generate a report containing all information necessary to complete the pre-HSCT forms (Forms 2804, 2814, 2400 and 2402). Within the program there are links to carry out the risk calculation of VOD (hepatic veno-occlusive disease)/SOS (hepatic sinus obstructive syndrome) and DRI (disaster risk index). There is also a calculator for the HCT-CI (Hematopoietic cell transplant specific comorbidity index), using as a template the site http://www.hctci.org/Home. The post-HSCT data can also be inserted, making it possible to use the database to fill up all the CIBMTR follow-up forms. Results and Discussion With the development of this database program a great improvement was achieved in the quality of organization of internal data and in the timely report to the CIBMTR. Between 2011 and 2014 the average percentage of forms submitted within the proposed deadline was 25.5%, while between 2015 and July 2018 this average increased to 80.5%. Currently, approximately 200 HSCT are reported annually and around 900 post-transplant follow-up forms are sent. Conclusion As the new tool was developed by the data manager, we have the possibility to edit the program according to our needs and with the information requested by CIBMTR. Idealized for routine use, this tool allowed the organization of the information, in a large HSCT center with few resources, helping us to report 100% of the HSCT performed to the CIBMTR since 2009.