A Critical Look at a Critical Care Dataset: MIMIC-IV's Construction, Contents, & Consequences

Abstract

MIMIC (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care) is one of the largest, most commonly-used, freely available datasets containing intensive care unit data. I conduct denotative, connotative, and deconstructive readings of the MIMIC-IV dataset through an analysis of the data sources, dataset structure, and the process for getting access to the data, as well as documents and concepts related to the dataset. As a result, I demonstrate that the MIMIC-IV dataset requires more documentation, including an expansion of the existing descriptions, in order to ensure the data is used appropriately and allow for maximum benefit. I make recommendations for future users of the MIMIC-IV dataset, creators of datasets in general, and researchers in the Critical Data Studies field based on my findings.