Transparent, reproducible and reusable research in pharmacoepidemiology

Background: Epidemiological research has been criticized as being unreliable. Scientific evidence is strengthened when the study procedures of important findings are transparent, open for review, and easily reproduced by different investigators and in various settings. Studies often have common scientific workflows. The development of generalized execution engines, reusing epidemiological software/script program code for specific clinical questions, can serve as a valuable tool for transparent and reproducible research. Objectives: Learn about standards for transparent, reproducible and reusable research and how it is being applied in pharmacoepidemiolgy. Description: The focus of the symposium will be transparent, reproducible and reusable research. Principles of reproducible research in the context of the Medication History Estimator will be discussed. In addition, an overview of the IMI-PROTECT WP2: Framework for pharmacoepidemiologic studies and the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership will be given. Outline: 1. Principles of reliability (Helga Gardarsdottir): Introduction to basic principles of transparent reproducible and reusable research. 2. Standardization (Huifang Liang): Standardization of data for drug utilization studies. A discussion of steps involved to convert the raw data into the readily usable data, including how to impute certain fields with examples. 3. Demonstration of the Medication History Estimator (MHE) and a description of the VINCI EpiTools (Brian Sauer). The MHE will be presented to demonstrate concepts of transparency, reproducibility and reuse. 4. The IMI-PROTECT project (Olaf Klungel & Robert Reynolds). Experiences with developing, testing and disseminating methodological standards for the design, conduct and analysis of database studies will be discussed. 5. Lessons from the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (Patrick Ryan, PhD). Standardized analytics tools developed by the OMOP community to characterize, visualize, and explore the effects of medical products within a distributed network of observational databases will be presented. 6. Closing summary/discussion. Chairs: Helga Gardarsdottir & Brian Sauer.