HARLEM HARMONIZATION HACKATHON
HARMONIZATION
Background
When we were at InTBIR and the NINDS TBI Classification and Nomenclature Workshop in D.C. this past January, the lack of data harmonization between research datasets and data existing in the medical record came up several times. With the vision of Ari Ercole (Cambridge) and the inspiration of David Okonkwo (UPMC) to “just get things done,” several of us got together to figure out how we might solve this issue.
Importance & Purpose
Though there are local harmonization efforts such as the Common Data Elements for research, we lack a global harmonization schema for bedside data (physiology, therapeutic actions, etc.) and data in the electronic medical record in hospitals. The need for this is becoming more acute as we start to mine data across hospitals and previous observational datasets (such as the TRACK-TBI datasets), and correlate it with other factors in the medical record.
The mostly likely reason that this has not yet been done is that a small group of very busy researchers need this done urgently, and the need has not been felt by a wider audience. And, at least for those who recently participated in the Curing Coma Campaign Common Data Elements effort, it’s a labor of love and not something you get career points for.
The Plan
Harlem, NY, U.S.
Haarlem, Netherlands
We acknowledge the tedious nature of this work, and have decided we have to make the meeting as fun as possible. We’ve decided to have two meetings, one in Europe and one in the U.S. To keep the harmonization theme, we decided to meet in Harlem, NYC and Haarlem, Netherlands. We plan to call it the Harlem Harmonization Hackathon.
Ari Ercole has agreed to lead the effort and Peter Smielewski will participate. We have the blessings of INCF (via Mathew Abrams), and it’s likely we would submit our output to INCF. We are hoping to have the first meeting perhaps this summer the NYC, and the second one perhaps right after the Cambridge INTS meeting in early September (or later in the fall). All of this is tentative. A goal would be to report on our work at the Neurocritical Care Society meeting in October. Moberg Analytics will help with logistics, publicity, and funding; we are working on some grants for travel support.
We will promise attendees t-shirts and other enticements. While in D.C., we got to know Shubhayu Bhattacharyay who is finishing his PhD in Cambridge with Ari and starting medical school at Harvard this fall. His work is very relevant to this topic, and he was one of the main instigators for this effort. We decided to make the two of us yet another meme for harmonization: a young, bright Indian guy who represents new knowledge and the future, and an old, senile, white guy who represents all the legacy systems that we can’t get rid of and therefore need to interface.
Here's to peace, love, and harmonization.
Involved So Far:
Ari Ercole, University of Cambridge
Dick Moberg, Moberg Analytics
Shubhayu Bhattacharyay, University of Cambridge
Peter Smielewski, University of Cambridge
Craig Maddux, Moberg Analytics
Ethan Moyer, Moberg Analytics
Soojin Park, Columbia Neurology
Peter Hu, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Mathew Abrams, International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF)
Gretchen M. Brophy, Virginia Commonwealth University
Austin Zaloum, McGill University
Eric Rosenthal, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University
Brandon Foreman, University of Cincinnati
Ewout Steyerberg, Leiden University
Geert Meyfroidt, UZ Leuven
Abel Torres Espin, University of Waterloo School of Public Health Sciences
Florian van Leeuwen, Leiden University Medical Center
Neeraj Badjatia, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Tasks
- Contact key participants and organizations to collaborate (& make sure there is no overlap)
- Solicit ideas
- Write up goals and a schedule for the meeting
- Figure out meeting logistics (length, date, etc.)
- Research venues
- Write up grant proposals and white paper
Contact Moberg Analytics if interested!
If you are working in harmonization on the data science or clinical side and want to have fun (i.e. get involved), please contact us through the email below. We would like to have a planning meeting in the next few weeks so we can get some funding applications submitted in March. Thank you for your interest!