danicat / datasus

An Interface for the Brazilian Public Healthcare Data Repository (DATASUS) for the R Language
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Including data on healthcare facilities #4

Open rafapereirabr opened 7 years ago

rafapereirabr commented 7 years ago

Hi Dani,

I was wondering if it would be possible to include in the package a function a download data on healthcare facilities.

This is ftp source I've been using to download the data of healthcare facilities in Rio. Important things to note:

ftp://ftp.datasus.gov.br/dissemin/publicos/CNES/200508_/Dados/ST/STRJ1506.dbc

most importantly, super congrats for the package !!!

danicat commented 7 years ago

Thanks for your feedback Rafael! Indeed, I'm currently working on adding healthcare stablishments (CNES) support to the package. It is actually the next thing in my to do list.

I can't promise anything, but I believe I'll have some experimental support of the CNES datasets by the end of this month.

This inconsistency problem you've mentioned is actually pretty common in all the DATASUS' datasets. Sometimes the file naming is different, sometimes there are fields in one file but they aren't available in another file from the same dataset and so on...

I'm addressing these issues when possible. The default behaviour is to load all data using the "common denominator" (like, loading fields only available on all files of the same group), but I'm leaving space for custom selections to fit for everyone's needs.

Still, I feel I've not dedicated enough time to this problem to find the most "elegant" solution. I may get back to it once the package is more mature.

About the VPN, I'm not sure why the FTP access from UK would be blocked... it doesn't make sense. Have you tried accessing from another network?

rafapereirabr commented 7 years ago

@danicat , I had success accessing the link from Brazil and from the UK when using a VPN. Otherwise, I've only tried the link from the UK from two different networks of two universities. I have no clue what could cause this, though

danicat commented 7 years ago

@rafapereirabr It seems that the brazilian government is blocking access from other countries... I just have been contacted by a researcher from JHU that is having the same problem as yours. Are you using a public VPN service? Maybe your solution could help this researcher as well.

rafapereirabr commented 7 years ago

Ah, such a shame to hear this. I'm not using a public VPN, though. What I would suggest is that the researcher asks someone he/she knows in Brasil to download the file and send him/her via email/dropbox etc.

hliebert commented 5 years ago

Hey, do you still plan on adding this? Thanks for providing the package!