Simpler handling of clinical concepts in R with clinconcept

Abstract: Routinely collected data in electronic healthcare records are often underpinned by clinical concept dictionaries. Increasingly data sets from these sources are being made available and used for research purposes, but without additional tooling it can be difficult to work effectively with these dictionaries due to their design, size and complex nature. In an effort to improve this situation the clinconcept package was created to provide a straightforward way for researchers to build, manage and interrogate databases containing commmonly used clinical concept dictionaries. This article describes the rationale behind the package, how to install it and use it and how it can be extended to support other data sources.