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Heart Matters is Founded
BRFSS is the nation’s premier system of health-related telephone surveys that collect state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services. -
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Data Characteristics
Heart Matters uses telephone surveys to collect data on chronic health conditions, physical activity trends, weight conditions, preventive services, smoking and other health-related risk behaviors. It is important to collect this data accurately and thoroughly as not doing so increases the margin of error and potentially makes the data not statistically significant. -
Data Retrieval
Data was retrieved from the BRFSS database and stored in CSV format on a secure hard drive in a securely locked room. -
Heart Matters Expansion
The Alabama facility received funding for a new SQL database to store, manage and analyze data. -
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Data Provenance
The data has been transferred three times to three different mediums. We know that the CSV file was saved to a secure hard drive, but it's possible that the IT administrator did not in fact use a secure flash drive when he copied the data. This could potentially explain why the file did not properly import to the SQL database. -
Data Transfer
The IT system administrator physically transferred the data to a flash drive, delivered to Alabama and immediately imported into the new SQL system. -
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Managing Data
The full data is still in CSV format on the secure hard drive, as it was only copied. It is in SQL, with missing information. I believe we will need to delete everything from the SQL and convert the CSV directly from the hard drive to make sure all information is imported properly. We will also need to investigate the flash drive usage and potential HIPAA violations due to the missing personal health information. -
New Data Anayst
Heart Matters hires a new data analyst to re-review the master data set for Alabama. This data would be used to determine the top three health concerns the new Alabama facility should focus on. -
File Error
The data analyst discovered the CSV file contained characters that were unreadable by the SQL database during data migration. As a result, some rows of data did not import properly, resulting in data loss. The data analyst discovered that the import quantity didn’t match the original CSV file and requested help to identify the missing information.