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OHDSI is a collaborative initiative focused on leveraging health data for large-scale analytics. The program connects researchers and health databases worldwide, with a central hub at Columbia University. The 2025 Global Symposium brought together over 400 participants to discuss enhancing trust in science and fostering international collaboration.
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OHDSI, pronounced "Odyssey," is an initiative focused on leveraging health data through large-scale analytics. It operates as a collaborative effort involving multiple stakeholders from various fields. The program emphasizes the importance of open-source solutions, making its tools and findings accessible to a broader audience. The initiative is anchored by a network of researchers and observational health databases, with the main coordinating center located at Columbia University.
In 2025, OHDSI hosted a Global Symposium that attracted over 400 collaborators. The event aimed to enhance trust in scientific research and foster collaboration on a global scale through network studies. Participants engaged in discussions that highlighted shared progress and new partnerships. The symposium also focused on the community’s dedication to producing reliable and reproducible evidence in health research. Resources like talks, posters, and slides from the event can be found on the symposium's homepage, providing further insights into the discussions and findings shared during the gathering.
Questions about this article
Q: Can you crawl the website to find other resources that would support that?
The OHDSI website provides a wealth of resources to support the use of observational health data and large-scale analytics. Here’s a comprehensive look at the tools and resources available:
1. **Open-Source Tools**:
- **[ATLAS](https://atlas.ohdsi.org)**: This web-based tool facilitates the design and execution of analyses on standardized, patient-level observational data formatted according to the OMOP Common Data Model (CDM). It allows users to create effect estimation or prediction studies and generates R code for execution in any CDM-compatible environment.
- **[HADES](https://ohdsi.github.io/HADES/)**: A collection of R packages designed for performing observational studies. It provides functions for population characterization, effect estimation, and patient-level prediction, ensuring best practices for transparency and reproducibility.
- **[Data Quality Dashboard](https://ohdsi.github.io/DataQualityDashboard/)**: This tool assesses the quality of data in the CDM, performing over 1,500 checks and quantifying compliance to ensure data integrity.
- **[ACHILLES](https://ohdsi.github.io/Achilles/)**: Used for database characterization and visualization. It provides summary reports that help evaluate the composition of CDM databases in a network.
- **[ATHENA](https://www.ohdsi.org/data-standardization/athena/)**: A resource for searching and loading standardized vocabularies relevant to the OMOP CDM. It supports users in acquiring the necessary vocabulary tables for their datasets.
2. **Data Standardization**:
- The OHDSI community promotes the [OMOP Common Data Model](https://www.ohdsi.org/data-standardization/), which standardizes data from different sources, facilitating collaborative research and large-scale analytics. This model allows for systematic analysis across diverse databases, accommodating both electronic medical records and administrative claims data.
3. **Tutorials and Educational Resources**:
- OHDSI provides a variety of [open-source tutorials](https://www.ohdsi.org/open-source-tutorials/) that guide users through the implementation of the OMOP CDM and the use of analytics tools. These tutorials cover a range of topics, from basic concepts to advanced analytical techniques.
4. **Community and Collaboration**:
- The OHDSI network consists of over 600 million patients and includes numerous collaborators across various institutions. The platform encourages participation through community forums and collaborative projects, making it easier to engage with others in the field.
5. **Events and Symposiums**:
- OHDSI hosts events like the [2025 Global Symposium](https://www.ohdsi.org/) to foster collaboration and share progress in generating trustworthy evidence. Past presentations from these events can be found on their [Past Presentations](https://www.ohdsi.org/resources/presentations/) page.
6. **Funding and Support**:
- There's a dedicated section for those interested in supporting the OHDSI mission. Contributions can be made through unrestricted grants or specific project funding, helping sustain the collaborative's efforts in open-source health data analytics.
These resources make OHDSI a robust platform for researchers and practitioners aiming to leverage observational health data effectively. For anyone looking to contribute or utilize these tools, engaging with the community or exploring the available software and educational materials is a great starting point.
February 13, 2026 at 01:41 AM
Q: Can you crawl the site to find three common sql queries?
Based on the content provided from the OHDSI site, here are three common SQL queries that could be relevant for users working with the OMOP Common Data Model (CDM) using OHDSI tools:
1. **Query to Count Unique Patients**: This query retrieves the number of unique patients in the database. It helps in understanding the size of the patient population being analyzed.
```sql
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT person_id) AS unique_patients
FROM person;
```
2. **Query for Drug Exposure**: This query counts the number of drug exposures for a specific drug. It's useful for studies related to medication usage.
```sql
SELECT COUNT(*) AS drug_exposure_count
FROM drug_exposure
WHERE drug_concept_id = <specific_drug_concept_id>;
```
3. **Query to Aggregate Condition Occurrences**: This query retrieves the total number of occurrences of specific conditions for a patient cohort, which can inform on the prevalence of certain health issues.
```sql
SELECT condition_concept_id, COUNT(*) AS condition_count
FROM condition_occurrence
WHERE person_id IN (SELECT person_id FROM cohort WHERE cohort_definition_id = <specific_cohort_id>)
GROUP BY condition_concept_id;
```
These queries can be run against a database structured in the OMOP CDM format. The queries leverage basic SQL functionality to gather insights from the observational health data, facilitating research and analytics efforts. For further exploration of these queries and the underlying data model, users can refer to the [OHDSI Wiki](https://www.ohdsi.org/web/wiki/), which provides extensive resources on implementation and analytics.
February 13, 2026 at 01:44 AM