Wednesday, November 5, 2014

ValueList web services for SDTM

Today, I added three more web services, which have to do with SDTM value lists:

  • Validate whether a CDISC unit is a correct unit for a given (VS) test code
  • Validate whether a Vital signs "position" (VSPOS) is a correct "position" for a given (VS) test code
  • Validate whether a Character Result/Finding in Standard Format text value (EGSTRESC) for a given ECG Test code (EGTESTCD) is a valid value
These web services are based on the excellent work of Anthony Chow (CDISC), who published these lists (as Excel) on the CDISC website under "CT Mapping/Alignment Across CodeLists". 
All I did is generate a relational database from these lists, and then writing the new web services using RESTful technology.

For example, when you submit:
http://www.xml4pharmaserver.com:8080/CDISCCTService/rest/isValidCDISCUnitForCDISCTestCode/DIABP/mmHg
meaning "validate whether 'mmHg' is a valid CDISC unit for the vital signs test 'DIABP') to the web service, the string "true" is returned, but  when you however submit http://www.xml4pharmaserver.com:8080/CDISCCTService/rest/isValidCDISCUnitForCDISCTestCode/HR/mmHg,
the string "false" will be returned.

This is not "rocket science" at all - it took me one evening to create and add the tables to an existing relational database, and about 3 hours to develop, test, and roll out the web services (and write this blog ...).

This is just a first simple example of what is possible, one can easily do similar things for more or even extremely complicated domains such as the LB domain (laboratory) - however in my opinion, we should have a complete rewrite of the LB domain, and use LOINC for the tests, and UCUM for the units.

The complete list (for the new ones, look near the bottom) of the available web services can be found at:
http://www.xml4pharmaserver.com/WebServices/index.html

Are these the kind of web services you would like to see implemented with SHARE? Please let me (and CDISC) know ... 

Saturday, November 1, 2014

More web services

In the last weeks and months, with help of my students at the university, I developed some more web services for use with CDISC standards, especially for use with SDTM and CDISC controlled terminology. Almost all of these have been implemented in the "Smart Dataset-XML Viewer".
I got very enthusiastic reactions about these web services, especially during a demo for CDISC officials, for the Japanes CDISC User Group (CJUG) and yesterday during a "Dataset-XML CDISC Training" in Copenhagen, Denmark. As I could also nicely test the services during the last weeks, and found no major issues, I decided today to make the specification of these web services publicly available. You can find them at:

http://xml4pharmaserver.com/WebServices/index.html

These are all RESTful web services, so extremely easy to implement in your own applications, and as RESTful services are based on HTTP, you can even test them in a browser.

Suggestions for new services and for improvements are as always very welcome. Please just contact me at info@xml4pharma.com.