NICOR: National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research

NICOR

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Data Collection

The BCIS NICOR database is intended to record information about every PCI procedure performed on all patients in the UK. Data are collected using a variety of database programs. NICOR supports the use of LOTUS Notes ^TM software  can provide the program and license without charge to the center.

Regardless of platform, the local database generates a comma separated values file to a standard format. This file is uploaded to PCI centre's local copy of Lotus Notes software to manage the encryption and subsequent internet transfer of these data to the central NICOR servers.

The same software provides a portal for data analysis and is used to generate reports. The Lotus Notes program and licence is provided without charge to all PCI units in the UK.

The audit is continuous and we advise data should be submitted on a regular basis.

The audit covers each calendar year and around 80 to 90,000 PCI procedure records are entered from across the United Kingdom each year. 

Please note: The data submission deadline for 2012 data is April 1st 2013.

Data Quality

The completeness and internal consistency of the data is assessed during upload by a set of validation rules. These fall into one of four categories:

• data are perfect and accepted without comment
• data are consistent bar some missing entries
• data are internally inconsistent but data are accepted
• data are internally inconsistent and rejected by NICOR

The BCIS data validation rules can be obtained by following the link below:

BCIS-CCAD dataset validation rules (pdf 146kb)