No problem if you know how to take advantage of Qlik's Apply Map functionality.
If you've spent 2 minutes looking at the Encounters tables in most electronic health systems you know that they typically contain a slew of ID's but very little text. You will typically find Admitting Provider ID, Attending Provider ID, Discharging Provider ID as well as many other id's pointing to other things like nursing units, patient type and admission type etc. Relational database systems (RDBMS) like SQL Server and Oracle love those ID's because they are fundamentally "relational" in nature. Database administrators love to "normalize". The issue is your customers/end users don't have a clue who Physician 193839 is.
Qlik provides a great deal of ways to help you "de-normalize" those ID's into human readable text like "Dr Smith." One such way is using APPLY MAP. This involves a 2 step process where you build the map (cross walk) and then you apply the map to a field like the "Admitting Physician ID."
There are times when you may want additional information about Physicians, units, types but if all you need is to convert an ID to a name/location then Apply Map is the way to go.
This video utilizes the General Hospital data set (Click here to get it yourself) and shows you how to build a map of the physician id's and names that you can then apply when loading the encounters table. Hopefully the example and data set help you succeed on your path to becoming a Qlik Data Architect guru.
