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What is OHDSI?

OHDSI (www.ohdsi.org) is a multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary collaborative that is striving to bring out the value of observational health data through large-scale analytics. Our research community enables active engagement across multiple disciplines (e.g., clinical medicine, biostatistics, computer science, epidemiology, life sciences) and spans multiple stakeholder groups (e.g., researchers, patients, providers, payers, product manufacturers, regulators).

OHDSI has established an international network of researchers and observational health databases with a central coordinating center housed at Columbia University.

OHDSI has developed many open source tools to support the Extraction Transform Load (ETL) process and is actively developing an analytical toolbox to perform transparent and reproducible research against the OMOP-CDM. You can find all necessary information about the data standardization to the OMOP-CDM itself here.

Why a European coordinating center?

Stimulate transparent and reproducible research

Transparent and reproducible research is our goal and we believe that this cannot be achieved without proper data standardization. The OMOP-CDM is becoming the de-facto standard for health data across the world and has proven its value. We like to stimulate the adoption of the  OMOP-CDM in Europe for this reason.

European challenges

Improving interoperability is challenging in Europe because of the large amount of vocabularies and data structures used in the different countries. Local expertise is required to extend the OHDSI standard vocabularies to capture all European coding systems. Moreover, we like to systematically evaluate the CDM structure for our European data and future studies. Coordination of this important task is needed.

Regulatory interest

The OMOP-CDM and analytical tools allow for more efficient pharmacovigilance which is beneficial for the patient. Regulators have shown interest in the OHDSI initiative and like to evaluate its use in Europe. Having a European coordinating center has clear benefits for interacting with these regulators.

Community building

We like to strengthen the European contribution to the global OHDSI community. We can contribute in tool development and also of course participate in large global studies that have not been possible before. Furthermore, we need to educate all the stakeholder to guarantee high quality in data transformation and usages. The annual OHDSI symposium is a perfect instrument to gain momentum, inform, and enlarge the European OHDSI community. We need to get insight in all OMOP-CDM related activities in Europe and work together as much as possible.

How can you contribute?

We need all hands on deck. Everyone is welcome to actively participate in OHDSI, whether you are a patient, a health professional, a researcher, or someone who simply believes in our cause. There are several ways you can participate:

  1. In OHDSI Europe we aim to enable collaboration among all stakeholders. For this we use the OHDSI Europe Chapter in the OHDSI MS Teams environment. For more information see this page.
  2. Become active in our OHDSI forum. The OHDSI fora are very active and we encourage you to participate in all the interesting discussion.
  3. Contribute to the European OHDSI Symposium by presenting your research. We will organise a poster session, but also like to give project that are adopting the OMOP-CDM a podium to present their achievements.
  4. We are very interested to know if you are currently in the process of translating your database to the CDM or are using the tools.
  5. If you are active in a European project that adopts OHDSI we like to add your project to our website and start and active collaboration.
  6. You can provide financial support to the community needed for the annual symposium

If you need more information you can use our contact form

Sponsoring

Financial support is necessary to sustain the OHDSI Europe initiative. Some of us provide our time as in-kind contributions to the collaborative. Others are seeking support to facilitate their contributions to the collaborative through a variety of funding sources such as public or private grants, industry contracts, and other opportunities. 

If you are interested in supporting OHDSI Europe please use the contact form