Company
Date Published
Author
Ryan Cheley
Word count
799
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Data exchange in the healthcare sector is often inefficient, particularly when health plans require data to be submitted in Excel files for CMS regulations, leading to issues when templates are frequently changed without clear communication. The author addresses this challenge by using Python and the Pandas library to automate the process of comparing Excel files, identifying differences in content, and writing out any discrepancies to a text file for easier analysis. This solution leverages Pandas' capability to compare DataFrames and uses a script to identify and document any changes in Excel file headers. While the current implementation is effective, the author suggests future enhancements to improve user interactivity, such as allowing users to input file names and select tabs via the command line, aiming to make the tool more user-friendly and reduce manual effort in data comparison tasks.