2022 OHDSI Symposium

Oct. 14-16 • Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center

Thank you to everybody who joined us in Bethesda, Md., for the 2022 OHDSI Symposium. This page features all materials from the main conference, which focused on “Building A Healthier World Together.” It includes videos of all the presentations, links to the collaborator showcase, and all slidedecks from the speakers at the bottom of the page.

The weekend also featured an all-day tutorial on “An Introductory Journey from Data to Evidence.” Please visit our tutorial homepage to visit those recordings and slides.

State of the Community

George Hripcsak (Columbia University) opened the 2022 OHDSI Symposium with a reflection on the state of the OHDSI community. The talk provided a high-level overview of what OHDSI is all about, recent achievements, and how to become more active in the community. It uses the recent “Our Journey” publication as a guide, which you can access here.

Following that talk, Patricia Lloyd (US Food and Drug Administration) gives a brief talk on safety monitoring of COVID-19 vaccines within the FDA BEST Initiative. OHDSI is proud to support FDA efforts in this area.

Plenary: Objective Diagnostics: A pathway to provably reliable evidence

The plenary presentation from the 2022 OHDSI Symposium was led by Martijn Schuemie (Johnson & Johnson) and focused on ‘Objective Diagnostics: A pathway to provably reliable evidence.’ Patrick Ryan (Johnson & Johnson, Columbia University) also took part in this session.

This session introduced a series of diagnostics that can be evaluated to determine database, phenotype, and analysis fitness-for-use for generating reliable evidence. The presentation demonstrates the empirical performance of these objective diagnostics across the LEGEND-HTN result set to illustrate how objective diagnostics can be used and how they improve the quality of evidence generated.

Presentations: OHDSI support for regulatory authorities

The 2022 OHDSI Symposium included a trio of presentations focused on OHDSI support for regulatory authorities. Each talk included an introduction from a regulatory agency representative.

Right – US FDA/CBER: Performance of vaccine safety surveillance methods (Fan Bu, UCLA)
Below, left – Korean National Institute of Food and Drug Safety Evaluation; Evolution of Evidence-Based Medicine: Why Do We Replicate Trials? (Seng Chan You, Yonsei University)
Below, right – European Medicines Agency: DARWIN-EU (Peter Rijnbeek, Erasmus MC)

Collaborator Showcase

Click here to visit all of the posters, software demos and lightning talks presented at the 2022 Symposium. The OHDSI Symposium Collaborator Showcase featured eight lightning talks that were moderated by Kristin Kostka of Northeastern University.

Disambiguation of ICPC codes using free-text and active learning to improve concept mappings (Tom Seinen, Erasmus MC)
OHDSI Phenotype Phebruary: lessons learned (Azza Shoaibi, Johnson & Johnson)
Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle: Going Green with Atlas Reusables (Ajit Londhe, Amgen)
Best practices for prognostic model development using observational health data: a scoping review (Cynthia Yang, Erasmus MC)
Machine Learning for Predicting Patients at Risk of Prolonged Opioid Use Following Surgery (Behzad Naderalvojoud, Stanford University)
When does statistical equality meet health equity: developing analytical pipelines to compare associational and causal fairness in their application to EHR data (Linying Zhang, Columbia University)
Analyzing the Effect of Hypertension on Retinal Thickness Using Radiology Common Data Model (R-CDM) (Chul Hyoung Park, Ajou University)
Multinational Patterns of Second-line Anti-hyperglycemic Drug Initiation: A LEGEND-T2DM Study (Lovedeep Dhingra, Yale University)

Closing: Building A Healthier World Together

The 2022 Symposium Closing Talk was provided by Patrick Ryan (Johnson & Johnson, Columbia University), who discussed the theme of Building A Healthier World Together, and how the OHDSI community can collaborate to achieve that goal. He focused on the scientific practices that can help this aim, but he also discussed the critical value of teamwork. That led to the first-ever OHDSI Lego Challenge, as well as a memorable lego stop-motion video (58:35 in the presentation).

This talk opened with the announcement of the 2022 Titan Award recipients. The Titan Awards are awarded annually to individuals or teams within the OHDSI community who have made significant contributions towards advancing OHDSI’s mission, vision and values.

They are both nominated and voted upon by community members, and they are announced at the global symposium. The recipients were:
Data Standards: Melanie Philofsky, Odysseus Data Services
Methodological Research: Fan Bu, UCLA
Open-Source Development: Egill Fridgeirsson, Erasmus MC and James Gilbert, Janssen Research and Development
Clinical Applications: Xintong Li, University of Oxford
Community Collaboration: Ajit Londhe, Boehringer Ingelheim
Community Leadership: Paul Nagy, Johns Hopkins University
Community Support: Craig Sachson, Columbia University

Slidedecks From The Main Conference

Session I • State of the Community
• State of the Community (George Hripcsak, Columbia University)
• Safety Monitoring of COVID-19 Vaccines within the FDA BEST Initiative (Patricia Lloyd, US Food and Drug Administration)

Session II • Plenary
• Objective Diagnostics: A pathway to provably reliable evidence (Martijn Schuemie, Johnson & Johnson; Patrick Ryan, Johnson & Johnson/Columbia University)

Session III • OHDSI support for regulatory authorities
• US FDA/CBER: Performance of vaccine safety surveillance methods (Fan Bu, UCLA)
• Korean National Institute of Food and Drug Safety Evaluation; Evolution of Evidence-Based Medicine: Why Do We Replicate Trials? (Seng Chan You, Yonsei University
• European Medicines Agency: DARWIN-EU (Peter Rijnbeek, Erasmus MC)

Session IV • Lightning Talks
• Disambiguation of ICPC codes using free-text and active learning to improve concept mappings (Tom Seinen, Erasmus MC)
• OHDSI Phenotype Phebruary: lessons learned (Azza Shoaibi, Johnson & Johnson)
• Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle: Going Green with Atlas Reusables (Ajit Londhe, Amgen)
• Best practices for prognostic model development using observational health data: a scoping review (Cynthia Yang, Erasmus MC)
• Machine Learning for Predicting Patients at Risk of Prolonged Opioid Use Following Surgery (Behzad Naderalvojoud, Stanford University)
• When does statistical equality meet health equity: developing analytical pipelines to compare associational and causal fairness in their application to EHR data (Linying Zhang, Columbia University)
• Analyzing the Effect of Hypertension on Retinal Thickness Using Radiology Common Data Model (R-CDM) (Chul Hyoung Park, Ajou University)
• Multinational Patterns of Second-line Anti-hyperglycemic Drug Initiation: A LEGEND-T2DM Study (Lovedeep Dhingra, Yale University)

Session V • Closing
• Building A Healthier World Together/Announcement of 2022 Titan Award Winners (Patrick Ryan, Johnson & Johnson/Columbia University)