Harmonising electronic health records for reproducible research: challenges, solutions and recommendations from a UK-wide COVID-19 research collaboration.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The CVD-COVID-UK consortium was formed to understand the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases through analyses of harmonised electronic health records (EHRs) across the four UK nations. Beyond COVID-19, data harmonisation and common approaches enable analysis within and across independent Trusted Research Environments. Here we describe the reproducible harmonisation method developed using large-scale EHRs in Wales to accommodate the fast and efficient implementation of cross-nation analysis in England and Wales as part of the CVD-COVID-UK programme. We characterise current challenges and share lessons learnt.

Methods

Serving the scope and scalability of multiple study protocols, we used linked, anonymised individual-level EHR, demographic and

SUBMITTER: Abbasizanjani H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9842203 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature