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.