This version of CTcue contains a number of new functionalities, improvements and various bug fixes. Below you will first find a brief overview. Below that, you can read the extended release notes with more detail about some of the main changes in this version.
Improvements
- Repeating events questions are now available in the data collector
- A warning will be displayed when trying to import a project containing repeating events questions from the CTcue Hub into an older version of CTcue
- A warning now appears with filters on fields for which there is no data in the EHR
- The filter icon in the patient cohorts and data validation tables has been changed to a more recognizable one
- The design of the notification modal is improved
- The design of the single-patient pages is improved
- Terms can now be imported from archived projects
- Allow specifying units (days, months, years) when filtering by patients' ages
- The column preferences button on the patient cohorts page has been moved to a consistent position
- Added a modal that allows multiple codes to be imported in one fell swoop
- Deprecate importing legacy projects
- Improve menu organization in the administrative part of the application
- Restrict CTcue Hub configuration to CTcue consultants
- Removed option to subscribe to newsletter and feature updates upon creating an account
- All modals now prevent underlying user interface elements from being clicked until they are closed
- Improved loading times of the users page in the administrative section, particularly when users have many projects and sessions
- Include version numbers of TAP, DTP and AI pipeline in the system admin services overview
- Prevent relative date filters in the patient finder from depending on exclusion terms (and show a warning when relative date filters depend on exclusion terms in scenarios we cannot prevent)
- Improve visual consistency and hierarchy of import term and import question modals
- Added project setting for toggling automatic updates under validation features
- Added manual update capability in data validation table
- Various styling improvements
- Various performance improvements
Bug fixes
- Prevent application exceptions resulting from dtpservice errors
- Fixed an error that occurred when validating questions without terms
- Fixed a problem that prevented users with email addresses containing uppercase letters from importing CTcue Hub projects
- Ensure that all nested events are always fetched
- Update dependencies with security vulnerabilities
- Fixed a problem that prevented relative date filters from being saved
- Fixed a problem that prevented combined columns from being loaded
- Fixed a problem that prevented input containing a mixture of English and Dutch words from being interpreted correctly in the add term modal
- Allow hospital contacts to be removed with a single click
- Prevent care activity code filters from containing duplicate codes
- Added DBC code 99
- Highlight the questions menu item (instead of the data validation menu item) when previewing a question
- Ensure that the topmost visible item is consistently highlighted in the results timeline
- Close support modal when a user is logged out due to inactivity
- Prevent validation labels from being used across projects when importing questions
- Clean up data snapshot tables when deleting a project
- Fixed a problem that caused combined columns to disappear
- No longer hide report cards when deselecting all report columns
- Update selected answer label when navigating between questions
- Fixed an error that occurred when navigating to a removed project
- Fixed a problem that prevented answers from being reordered by dragging and dropping them in question result preferences
- Allow filtering on the amount of results in a group, which is currently defined as "amount of terms or nested groups with hits"
- Fixed a problem that prevented reports plus results from being taking the selected relevances into account
- If you toggle off the advanced validation features, a running validation data update will be stopped
- Update patient cohorts when reverting he patient finder query to the state it was in during the last search
- Prevent multiple hospitals from being created when repeatedly setting up the CTcue application
- Various change detection issue fixes
- Only include selected events in pagination
- Prevent parent and nested terms from both being collected
Extended release notes:
Below is a more detailed overview of some of the bigger or impactful changes in this version.
Repeating events (data collector)
This release sees the introduction of the widely requested repeating events feature. Repeating events is a new question type in the Data Collector and allows users to find related data around a list of specific events for each patient.
Why would you use it? Let’s say you want to know what complications were registered during a specific type of admission. In a specific time period, patients may have been admitted only once, five times or maybe even 20 times. However many times a patient has been admitted, you will want to collect the complications data for each of those admissions. The repeating events question acts more or less as an all results question, displaying all found admissions per patient. When you link other questions to it via the date filters, you will be able to drill down into the details of each admission. The main validation table will display the total number of admissions. When you click on a single patient, then you will see the list of admissions with all answers for the related questions as a second level of the validation table. Clicking through to the third level of the validation table will show you all the details of the specific event or related answer results.
Please note that repeating events projects can not be imported via the CTcue Hub in hospitals running version 4.7.0 or lower.
To learn more about how to use repeating events, please read the following FAQ articles (Dutch only):
- ‘Herhalende gebeurtenissen’ (repeating events) Vragen: informatie verzamelen rondom dezelfde gebeurtenis die meerdere keren bij 1 patiënt plaatsvindt
- Hoe verzamel ik gegevens om een gebeurtenis heen die vaker is voorgekomen bij één patiënt (herhalende gebeurtenissen, repeating events)
- Het bekijken, valideren en aanpassen van resultaten van 'herhalende gebeurtenissen' Vragen of data verzameld rondom herhalende gebeurtenissen (repeating events)
- Hoe stel ik in welke medische gegevens horend bij een ‘Herhalende gebeurtenissen’ Vraag in de export komen en hoe ziet het exportbestand eruit?
- Wat is er nog niet mogelijk met 'herhalende gebeurtenissen' (repeating events) Vragen?
As part of the repeating events implementation, a few other common elements of the table layout in both the patient finder and the data collector have been slightly changed:
- The navigation between the different layers of the data validation table has been replaced with breadcrumbs.
- The Prev/Next buttons have been moved to the top right side of the screen
- The patient pseudonyms have been removed
Manual data update (data collector)
In the data validation table, all data is always automatically updated when you access the table or when you change any questions. When building a large project, you may end up waiting a lot of time for the data to reload, blocking you from validating the data.
To help in this situation, you can now disable the automatic updates when validation features are enabled in the project settings. When disabled, only the data for changed questions will be automatically updated. For existing questions, the data in the validation table will not be updated when the data warehouse is updated. You can manually perform a full data update using the data update button that will appear at the top of the data validation table. You can compare the last manual data update date with the last data warehouse update date, to determine if new data may be available for your project. This gives you more control over when you want to validate data and when you want data to be updated.
Adding multiple codes at once
For the following categories and code filters, users can now add codes in bulk instead of adding them one by one, which will be a big timesaver:
- Admission periods: bed number
- Appointments: appointment code
- Care activities: care activity code
- Diagnoses: diagnosis code
- Medication requests: ATC codes, ZI numbers
- Surgery procedures: name
- [Belgium only] Administrative diagnosis: pathology classification, pathology code, diagnosis code, diagnosis type, diagnosis type of certainty, diagnosis present on admission, diagnosis chapter, diagnosis chapter division, diagnosis category, diagnosis subcategory, diagnosis subcategory 2, admission type, destination, risk of mortality, severity index, admission diagnosis label
- [Belgium only] Administrative invoice: nomenclature code
- [Belgium only] Administrative procedure: diagnosis code, procedure code, procedure outsource code
For these fields, you will find a new button to upload multiple codes at once. When you click this button, a new modal opens where you can paste a list of codes separated by a newline or a pipe (‘|’). For codes that also include a description, you only need to paste the code.
Patient age displayed in days, months or years
In the patient information (demographics) section in the patient finder and data collector, we now display the age of a patient in days and months, besides years - if you have the birth date permission enabled. This is especially useful for neonatal research where all patients are younger than 1 year. The unit will be displayed as months when the age is under 1 year and as days when it is under 1 month. Without the birth date permission, you will only see the age in years and filtering is limited to years and months.
Redesigned term import and question import screens + import from archived projects
The term import and question import screens have been redesigned slightly to make it easier for users to find the right terms or questions. By using indentation, different font sizes and adding dividers between sections and questions, the page is now easier to navigate and find what you are looking for.
In addition, you can now also import terms and questions from archived projects. On the “other projects” tab, we have added a drop-down filter to search in active projects, archived projects, or all projects. This allows you to reuse tried and tested building blocks while keeping a clean project overview.
Different icon for filters
Although a small change, it may be helpful to know that the icon for filters in the patient cohorts and data validation tables has been changed to a more universally recognizable icon for filter functions. See #1 in the screenshot below the next release item.
Column preferences button moved
Another minor change you may notice is that the button to set your column preferences for the patient information on the patient cohorts page has been moved up slightly, so that it is in a consistent position across all tables. See #2 in the screenshot below.
Warning for no data behind filters
In some hospitals there is no data mapped (yet) to certain filters, which means that if you add these filters to your query, you may no longer find any results. To prevent this from happening, a warning message will be displayed when this is the case. When you see this warning in your query, you are advised to remove the filter.
Deprecation notice for importing legacy projects
If you have any legacy projects (V2) left to import, then please import these as soon as possible. We will soon stop supporting this option and remove this page from our app in an upcoming release. A warning message is now displayed on the legacy project import page to warn users about this upcoming change.
Redesigned admin panel navigation
The navigation in the administration panel has been slightly reorganized to make it more consistent and future proof. All first and second level pages can now be navigated from the left side panel, while all third level pages can be found at the top of the page. In addition, the “System” page is renamed to “General”, while the pages “Connectors” and “Single sign-on" have been moved under “Configuration”.
Request CTcue Hub access via support
The option to enable the CTcue Hub for users must now be requested from the CTcue support team. Administrators can no longer enable this permission for users themselves.
Empty cohorts before running scheduled search
Users that run scheduled search or scheduled search and export for their project, now have the option to remove all patients from the included and excluded patient cohorts before the search is run. This allows patients that were previously included or excluded to be re-evaluated against the criteria. This option is available in the scheduling settings (see screenshot below). With the option disabled, any patient that was previously included or excluded will remain in that cohort (which is the existing behavior from previous versions).
