Ramses v0.5.0

Improvements

• Local databases (connect_local_database() and create_mock_database()) are now powered by DuckDB rather than SQLite, bringing support for datetime variable types and increased performance. Ramses now depends on the duckdb library
• Added new S4 class Encounter #92 to manipulate hospitalisations (admissions) with associated methods for show(), compute(), collect(), Patient(), longitudinal_table(), clinical_feature_*(), therapy_timeline()
• TherapyEpisode() and Encounter() have a new optional extend_table_start input controlling their longitudinal table's start. This allows the creation of longitudinal tables starting before the therapy_start or admission_date, respectively. More detail is available from vignette("therapy-episodes")
• Added Patient() function to create a Patient object from any other object of class RamsesObject
• Improved documentation and export of S4 methods compute() and collect().

Breaking changes

• therapy_table() is now deprecated: use longitudinal_table() instead #86
• bridge_spell_therapy_overlap() is now deprecated : use bridge_encounter_therapy_overlap() instead #86
• Database table inpatient_episodes and documentation now refer to 'encounters' rather than 'spells'. Variable spell_id is now known as encounter_id #86. Databases built with previous versions of Ramses will not work with Ramses 0.5.0
• Function signatures for all methods are standardised: function arguments object are now changed to x, except for show(object).
• Support for SQLite databases is withdrawn.