I currently work as a data entry person entering communicable disease reporting data into a secure online web-based database called MEDSIS which is the disease reporting database used in Arizona (and Sonora, Mexico). I have some coding experience (In Python, R, SAS, and some SQL) so my supervisor has asked me to look into how to automate the data entry that I do.
Automating data entry from an Excel Spreadsheet into a web-based form seems simple enough, the only thing I'm concerned about is the security of it (maybe MEDSIS will detect that it is an automated computer and shut it down? Maybe there's some way to work around that?) and I don't want to mess anything up so I'm hoping to get some advice from others before I start.
How I enter the data manually is: get the name of the outbreak from one excel sheet, search for the outbreak in MEDSIS, download the excel file with the cases in it from MEDSIS, open that up, search the name/DOB of each patient, enter the case if it's not already in MEDSIS.
MEDSIS does have an automated program for Electronic Lab Reporting where it enters lab testing data automatically from lab reports so I know that automating data entry into MEDSIS is possible. I'm thinking that I'd do the coding in Python, tell the computer to go to the login site, have whoever is running the code enter their credentials and then tell the computer to do whatever I do manually.
Additionally, sometimes the spreadsheets are not the same, they might have the columns switched around or some columns missing. I did ask about having an excel spreadsheet that we can send to each facility that is formatted and has drop-down selections so that every file is the same but there was some hesitancy with that because they want it to be accessible and not require a specific version of Excel. I also asked about having facilities enter their cases through a web-based form instead of sending us excel spreadsheets but that seems to be a no-go as well (it's hard to implement changes across hundreds of facilities). To solve this problem I was thinking that there are headings for each column so I could tell Python to find the cell with "DOB" and use the values in that column for Date-of-birth, etc. I could have the program skip a line and send an alert if it has missing data or if the program can't find the value so that we can go in manually afterwards to enter any cases that were left.
I'm just trying to think this through and create a plan of action so if anyone has experience with automating data entry into a secure form and has advice on the program they used, different roadblocks, things to consider, etc.
Thank you! -Zoe
I haven't tried anything yet. I'm hoping to get some advice before I start to help me build a plan-of-action.
