Another code takes search results from a NICE internal database, strips out the results that do not meet our inclusion criteria, and puts them into a NICE standard format which can then be pasted directly into a scoping document.
We’ve also been looking at how we can use the data from our Document Supply Tool to quickly determine the journals NICE has ordered the most papers from, which can then inform financial decisions about the cost effectiveness of subscribing to heavily ordered journals instead.
Challenges faced
While we are delighted to have several tools available after our year’s work, we can certainly also reflect on the chal- lenges we faced. Delays to projects for non-coding reasons, such as waiting for external input, have sometimes required a change of plan and, as such, adaptabil- ity has been key.
who are part of a world-wide organisation aiming to promote gender diversity in the R community. These have also helped our understanding, as did online textbooks and community of practice forums, such as Stack Overflow5
useful to consult when we were trying to work out the correct syntax required to deal with a particular issue.
There is also a NICE-wide coding club which meets monthly on Teams to discuss projects going on around the organisa- tion. This is mainly a group of enthusiasts who are also at different points on their coding journey, but it is certainly a group we have been able to approach to talk through issues.
Making tools We’ve worked on a variety of projects during our year of protected time. The first of these was our trials registry record reformatting tool, which converts CSV outputs from searches undertaken on the
Clinicaltrials.gov, ISRCTN and WHO registries into the formats we require. We created a Shiny App6
sifted alongside RIS uploads from other databases.
, which was particularly
We also have an R code that strips out the digital object identifiers (DOIs) from RIS outputs and converts them into a search strategy which can be useful for updating strategies or developing search filters. There is also a tool that scrapes the British National Formulary website to find the companies related to drugs, which is good for identifying biosimilars and such like.
In addition, and in a situation familiar to all information professionals, the technology can often fail us, or just baffle us. Lines of code that we were sure worked last week staring angrily back at us the next week with the word ERROR writ large. Or code that worked for one of us using the online interface but refused to on locally installed software. A lot of time was spent working out what the actual problem was. Over and above that, adopting a self- taught mode from an initial position of no knowledge at all meant that some- times we might not be able to find the correct nomenclature when looking for tips online to deal with a particular issue.
We can make use of the more experi- enced coders within NICE for support, but the balance we have needed to strike was when we should do so, as we didn’t want to miss out on an oppor- tunity to achieve the understanding by ourselves and neither did we want to overburden those who might support us. By the same token, after several hours of turning the air blue by shouting fruity epithets at an R interface that appeared to be increasingly disappointed in us, we needed to know when it was just not our day.
interface to run an R
script that then delivers a Word document displaying our scoping search layout. Connected to the trials registry refor- matting tool, we also put together a similar code that will turn clinical trials CSV outputs into a .txt file, that can then be converted to RIS and added to our in-house systematic review software to be
22 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
We’re not yet where we need to be in terms of an organisational infrastruc- ture that allows us to roll new tools out quickly. Also, we need to explore how we will work within the team on the maintenance of our codes. For example, the
ClinicalTrials.gov registry recently changed to its new interface and its CSV output changed as a result. As such our
September 2023
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