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Many medical professionals, from doctors’ offices to researchers, use Excel to manage their data. Accurate data is vital when you are talking about matters of life and death.
In the world of medicine, one wrong word can spell a death sentence for a patient. Of course, not all data is this serious, but you should still take care when you are managing healthcare or medical research data.
Excel is a powerful tool for keeping track of patient appointments, scheduling doctors, and organizing other information, such as contact numbers or insurance data.
Many clinics, hospitals and practitioners use Excel for these functions. Anyone seeking a career in medical office administration must take Excel as part of their curriculum.
Excel can also be used to keep track of medications, prescriptions and other health information.
Some doctors are providing patients with a spreadsheet to keep track of their health records. It’s a very helpful way to ensure that patients who have to take medications on a schedule can follow that plan.
Excel is also a fine form to use for patients who require a special diet. Perhaps you are starting your patient on a new weight loss program. Track your calories in your new spring salads by using Excel. You can also use it to track pounds lost, so you can celebrate as you reach your goals!
Some of the information you need may not be available in Excel format, it may be on paper, online or in PDF documents. Manually inputting a lot of information leads to mistakes, especially in a busy medical setting. Most healthcare facilities are running at maximum volume. By using a PDF to Excel converter, your staff will be able to free up some of their time.
Medical researchers are very familiar with Excel. They use it all the time to track data and prepare it for analysis.
Researchers may be great at what they do, but some of them aren’t trained properly in data management, or this isn’t their strong suit. Excel is a fantastic tool for statistical analysis, but the information may come from numerous sources in various media.
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Little mistakes in research data can cause larger errors or wrong results in a medical study. Many researchers have to share their data with colleagues, and Excel is a great sharing tool.
When researchers are applying for grants, they must put together an application with an analytic plan. Most researchers end up collecting way too much data at the beginning and have to manage all that information in a cohesive manner.
Missing information or errors can mean the difference between a grant or having your project dismissed because of lack of funds.
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Not only do researchers need to keep track of all this data, they have to provide a data dictionary which is a description of the data objects.
Because making an error in Excel is so common, many researchers recommend using another database management system and then importing the work into Excel.
It’s easy to make a mistake when you are working will a lot of statistics. If you are conducting market research, an error could skew the results, but what is the worst that could happen? When it comes to health matters, accuracy is what truly matters.
