Optimization of statistical processing of clinical and laboratory data in acute poisoning

Abstract

The article describes a specialized software application developed by the authors that summarizes the long-term experience of analyzing clinical and laboratory data in clinical toxicology using Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications object-oriented programming tools in Excel. The main purpose of the application is a significant (5-10 times) acceleration of the implementation of the complex of the most commonly used statistical algorithms. The application calculates descriptive sample characteristics, identifies deviations of sample distributions from the normal law by several generally accepted criteria, performs statistical comparison of data matrices by several criteria, and automatically generates a number of tables ready for placement in scientific texts for various purposes in Microsoft Word format. The presentation of the output data makes it easy to verify the results of calculations by comparing them with the output forms of the Statistica application software package. The acceleration of obtaining the final result is achieved: 1 – due to the absence of the need to move data from Excel to the package of applied statistical programs; 2 – as a result of automating the determination of task parameters by means of special color markup; 3 – by combining a limited number of the most commonly used statistical methods into one immutable complex; 4 – as a result of the software implementation of statistical comparison of all possible combinations of data matrices involved in the study for a set of indicators as a single operation that does not require user intervention; 5 – due to the application’s use of syntactic transformations of output data and automatic table formation by filling in ready-made templates with calculation results.