Accessing critical care big data: a step by step approach

Since the publication of an introductory article in the Journal of Thoracic Disease and the Chinese version in Journal of Clinical and Pathological Research (1,2), I received many letters inquiring about detailed steps in accessing the multiparameter intelligent monitoring in intensive care-2 (MIMIC-2) database. When I told them there were very good instructions on the website that can guide you accessing the whole database in a step-by-step approach, most of them were still confusing on some technical details. Probably, most of these readers are critical care clinicians who are interested in researches by using this database but they are lack of some basic knowledge of computer science. Therefore, I write this step-by-step guidance on how to access the MIMIC-2 clinical database, assuming that the readers have no knowledge on virtual machine and database management. In the manuscript, I used many figures to illustrate the detailed steps in establishing virtual machine. I hope that interested investigators can access this database freely without cumbering by technical difficulties.