Belmont College of Pharmacy Healthcare Informatics team members April Pepper, Phuong Truong and Karen Le have recently become database analysts using Amazon Relational Database Services (RDS) and Microsoft Corporation’s Structured Query Language (SQL).

The team’s analytics work focused on COVID-19-related data which was obtained from Data.Gov, the home of the U.S. Government’s open data. Under the OPEN Government Data Act, government data is required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, while continuing to ensure privacy and security. The Big Data tools from Amazon and Microsoft make it possible to analyze and manipulate the large data repositories stored there.

Le analyzed COVID-19 Provider Relief Funds, Pepper compared COVID-19 deaths to the total of all deaths (by county and state) and Truong analyzed COVID-19’s impact on mental health in the U.S.

J. Michael McGuire, PharmD, BCPP, associate professor of pharmacy at Belmont, recently presented a poster with several faculty from the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy at the annual meeting of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists (CPNP).

The poster, titled “Consumer Perception, Knowledge and Uses of Cannabidiol,” reported on findings from an anonymous, nationwide online survey administered through Qualtrics that consisted of sections about demographics, safety of CBD use, use of resources for CBD information and perception of CBD. Funding for the study was provided by the Belmont College of Pharmacy Departmental Fund and the University of Kansas General Research Fund.

The team found that a large portion of people are using CBD for psychiatric and neurologic conditions. The investigators noted that a high percentage of respondents reported significant adverse events with CBD products, but further analysis of data needs to be conducted.