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Should we have a 'study nurture committee'?

Researchers
#1

During the Population-Level Estimation WG meeting today, @SCYou and @nicolepratt proposed the following: Could we have an OHDSI committee that, upon request, can review a protocol, provide guidance, and help run a network study across the OHDSI network? Basically, it would ‘nurture’ the study from rough idea to completion.

Leading an OHDSI network study is very hard, and currently only a few in OHDSI are capable of executing a network study start-to-finish. Also, data sites might hesitate to run a study that doesn’t have some OHDSI stamp of approval (whatever that may mean). Perhaps this committee can also prevent multiple groups working on the same research question in isolation.

Such a committee could be staffed by volunteers, and perhaps if they contribute enough to the design, execution and interpretation of a study could be rewarded with a co-authorship as compensation for their efforts

@SCYou, @nicolepratt: let me know if I captured your idea correctly.

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OHDSI Study Nurture Committee
#2

Thank you bring this up @schuemie
Yes, I proposed ‘OHDSI review committee’ not for judging the researcher, but for nurturing OHDSI researchers.

I am not sure that we can actually help to build the study from the start to the finish because researchers can develop their own study protocol and R package by using current ATLAS. So the committee can start review with researcher’s first draft.
Still, as @Christian_Reich pointed out, many researchers are not familiar with git or current OHDSI way for the dissemination of research and don’t know how to access to data holders. Though we do have lots of drafts in studyprotocolsandbox, only a few of them have become the real OHDSI network study. Even though we do have great tools like ATLAS, there are so many hurdles including difficulty in SQL / R programming and reluctant data holders in OHDSI, currently.

Furthermore, the committee can help the researchers by finding practical errors or researcher’s mistakes in the protocol. Some of OHDSI way such as time-at-risk or setting covariates are still confusing. And we need to validate the definition of exposures and outcomes, too.

So, this is something like light version of monthly Study-A-Thon.

Of course, if I can I want to become a committee member for clinical review and data holder. Thank you!

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