Accessing the public MIMIC-II intensive care relational database for clinical research

Abstract

BackgroundThe Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care II (MIMIC-II) database is a free, public resource for intensive care research. The database was officially released in 2006, and has attracted a growing number of researchers in academia and industry. We present the two major software tools that facilitate accessing the relational database: the web-based QueryBuilder and a downloadable virtual machine (VM) image.ResultsQueryBuilder and the MIMIC-II VM have been developed successfully and are freely available to MIMIC-II users. Simple example SQL queries and the resulting data are presented. Clinical studies pertaining to acute kidney injury and prediction of fluid requirements in the intensive care unit are shown as typical examples of research performed with MIMIC-II. In addition, MIMIC-II has also provided data for annual PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenges, including the 2012 Challenge “Predicting mortality of ICU Patients”.ConclusionsQueryBuilder is a web-based tool that provides easy access to MIMIC-II. For more computationally intensive queries, one can locally install a complete copy of MIMIC-II in a VM. Both publicly available tools provide the MIMIC-II research community with convenient querying interfaces and complement the value of the MIMIC-II relational database.

Review of Clinical Databases

“…The database is de-identified, annotated and is made openly accessible to the research community. In addition to patient information driven from the hospital, the MIMIC-III database contains detailed physiological and clinical data [2]. In addition to big data research in critical care, this project aims to develop and evaluate advanced ICU patient monitoring and decision support systems that will improve the efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness of clinical decision-making in critical care.…”

Formulating the Research Question

“…As such, observational studies carry less risk of harm to patients (other than loss of confidentiality of data that has been collected) than RCTs, and tend to be less time-and cost-intensive. Retrospective databases like MIMIC-II [13] or the National Inpatient Sample [14] can also provide much larger study samples (tens of thousands in some instances) than could be enrolled in an RCT, thus providing larger statistical power. Additionally, broader study samples are often included in observational studies, leading to greater generalizability of the results to a wider range of patients (external validity).…”

“…The resulting digitized medical records present opportunities to overcome some of the shortcomings of administrative data, yielding granular data with laboratory results, medications, and timing of clinical events [13]. These "big databases" take advantage of the fact many EHRs collect data from a variety of sources such as patient monitors, laboratory systems, and pharmacy systems and coalesce them into one system for clinicians.…”

The Association Between Indwelling Arterial Catheters and Mortality in Hemodynamically Stable Patients With Respiratory Failure

“…The database contains data from 24,581 patients in ICUs and includes physiologic information from bedside monitors and hospital information systems in the adult ICUs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a tertiary care university academic medical center located in Boston, Massachusetts. 8 Th e data in MIMIC-II has been previously deidentifi ed, and the institutional review boards of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 0403000206) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (2001-P-001699/14) both approved the use of the database for research.…”