Handling relative dates

[mlterryMitre (May Terry)]

Is it possible to specify “relative dates” in any of the occurrence tables?

Some organizations cannot share absolute dates for privacy purposes.
One workaround is to specify a relative date to a point in time.

For example, we would like to indicate that a drug was given 10 days following a patient diagnosis.
In this case, we would like to have:

• CONDITION_OCCURRENCE.condition_start_datetime = 0 (to indicate that this is the significant event for which all other occurrences are relative.)
• DRUG_EXPOSURE.drug_exposure_start_datetime = 14

If a drug was given 5 days prior to the diagnosis then

• DRUG_EXPOSURE.drug_exposure_start_datetime = -5 (where negative means the number of days prior).

While we could consider other methods, we need a means by which we do not have to specify absolute days.

Thanks!
May Terry

[Christian_Reich]

@mlterryMitre:

Wait. If you have the date of the diagnosis, and you have the relative date of the drug then the drug_exposure_start_date=condition_start_date - relative drug date. No?

[jposada (Jose Posada)]

Hi @mlterryMitre,

If you do not need to do seasonal studies (e.g. real month and year) just shift each birthdate by a random number ± 10 years or so. Recompute the dates of all the other events according to that. The dates are meaningless now but the sequence of events is preserved. You will have cases where the medication will appear before they hit the market but that it is ok I believe. This will also misrepresent the number of people in a given period of time. However, both of those issues are exactly the same as using the “relative dates” you mentioned.

That is similar to the approach that is described in this forum for people over 89 but without truncation.

ETL Process for persons over age 89

Yes, @mnlubke, that is correct. Let’s assume someone was born on April 22, 1920. For this patient, we randomly generate a date-shift value of 229 days, and shift all of her dates – including her birthday – by this duration. Her date-shifted birthday is now December 7, 1920. On December 7, 2010, this patient turns 90 years old in date-shifted time. On this day, we shift the patient’s birthday forward by 1 year to December 7, 1921. Now the patient appears to be 89 years old in date-shifted t…

[Vojtech_Huser (Vojtech (Vojta) Huser)]

The question is: Do you support relative dates. (as SDTM does)
The official OMOP answer is: No. We don’t.

But we should have guidance (from Trial or registry WG ) on that. Such guidance does not exist at the moment. If I were to write it - I would say:

OMOP has no direct support for relative dates. Relative dates must be converted into dummy dates. Use index of 1 (not zero). Shift dates into de-identified context. E.g., Jan 1 2100 (or Jan 1 3000.)
Drug on day -2 will be on Dec 30 2099.

notes:
dec30 -2 day
dec31 -1 day
Jan 1 day 1 of informed consent (AVOID DAY ZERO!!!)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_(day_on_Mars)#Usage_in_Mars_landers and 1.3 here https://lhncbc.github.io/CRI/CONSIDER/CONSIDER-full.html#format

[MaximMoinat]

@Vojtech_Huser

But we should have guidance (from Trial or registry WG ) on that. Such guidance does not exist at the moment. If I were to write it - I would say:

Actually, the conventions created by the CT working group does contain a short section on relative dates. This basically echoes what you say here; OMOP needs an absolute date which needs to be derived/approximated from other variables.