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Save Our Sisyphus Challenge

Come join us! We are looking for your important clinical questions. Network studies are hard and you are not alone, we can do this together as a community.

The task of taking a research study from idea through design through execution through publication can seem a daunting challenge, much like rolling a boulder up a hill. That task is all the more challenging when researchers try to go it alone, as each step requires a distinct set of skills. Observational study design requires epidemiologic understanding and statistical methodological expertise. Implementing a study design requires statistical programming ability. Interpreting and reporting results requires domain knowledge of the clinical problem.

But when you are part of the OHDSI community, you never have to go it alone. And as a team effort, what seems an arduous task can become an efficient and effective process.

We are seeking important research questions that you want to contribute and participate in to take from idea to publication. The OHDSI community will provide support through every step of the process, working with you to design an appropriate protocol, implement a network analysis package, execute across OHDSI data partners, and prepare a manuscript for publication. Our goal is to collaboratively complete this network study over the course of 8 weeks across April and May, using the open-source tools and process that OHDSI has established.

Our 2023 SOS Challenge can focus on any of the three analysis use cases that we regularly discuss in OHDSI: clinical characterization-descriptive statistics for disease natural history and treatment utilization; population-level effect estimation-causal inference for safety surveillance and comparative effectiveness; or, patient-level prediction-machine learning for disease interception and precision medicine.

We are particularly interested in supporting junior researchers looking to conduct their first network analysis, but all OHDSI collaborators are welcome and encouraged to submit their ideas. If you are interested in participating in the SOS Challenge, please complete this form, where you’ll be asked to provide your research question and a statement about why you think your question is clinically important and should be answered by the OHDSI network.

Please submit your research study idea by 11:59pmET on Tuesday, February 28 using the link here https://forms.gle/DySfETJPtmwgquKv9

We will review all submissions at that time and identify a subset of those ideas based on potential impact and anticipated feasibility to present on an OHDSI community call on Tuesday, March 7, before opening up a vote to the entire community to select our SOS Challenge topic. If your research idea is selected, you agree to attend the weekly OHDSI community calls throughout the SOS Challenge and contribute to aspects of the study from design through publication.

Thanks @jmcleggon ! I’m really excited to see all the good ideas from our community, and very appreciative of your willingness to help lead our community throughout the journey from idea to evidence!

Everyone: please submit your idea for an OHDSI network study. We want to hear from you, and are looking for opportunities to generate reliable evidence that can make a big impact in informing decisions for the lives of patients around the world!

Submission deadline for the SOS challenge is fast approaching. Deadline to submit is February 28 11:59 PM EST. If you would like to submit your clinical ideas but are not sure where to start, here are some examples you can use to formulate your questions.

Friends: We’re still looking for more good ideas from the community. We’re going to be committing 2 months together working on one common research question across our network: let’s make it a good one!

Please submit your research questions now to the SOS challenge: https://forms.gle/DySfETJPtmwgquKv9

Today we heard from our four finalist, Jack Janetzki, Zenas Yiu, Thamir Alshammary and Cindy X. Cai. All presented compelling arguments as to why each of their studies are important. We encourage you to indicate your interest in one or more of the studies you would like to participate in. The survey is very short and takes only a minute to complete. https://forms.gle/AABHxYpMxgDAPr188

Friends:

I’m disappointed to see how few people have signed up thusfar to express interest in participating in one of the four Sisyphus Challenge network studies : https://forms.gle/AABHxYpMxgDAPr188

I’m hoping that’s just because people haven’t had a chance to fill out the brief survey above, or you like to procrastinate and are waiting until the Mar21 deadline.

We have four great opportunities to contribute:

  • Is fluoroquinolone use really associated with the development of aortic aneurysms (Jack Janetzki)
  • Amongst people with psoriasis, does exposure to Risankizumab increase the risk of venous thromboembolism while on treatment relative to other biologic therapies? (Zenas Yiu)
  • Characterization: incidence of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) during Multiple Sclerosis (MS) biologic exposure (Thamir Alshammary)
  • Intravitreal Anti-VEGF and Kidney Failure (Cindy Cai)

Each of these were nicely presented on this week’s OHDSI community call: Community Calls – OHDSI

I really hope that we’ll have enough interest from the community to carry forward all four studies. But that’ll only happen if you all raise your hand and agree to participate in one or more of the studies. Several of these studies should likely be feasible across most databases in our OHDSI network, so I hope to see many data partners opt in so they can learn from and contribute to this community activity.

There is still time to indicate your interest in any one or more of the four network studies! https://forms.gle/AABHxYpMxgDAPr188

  • Is fluoroquinolone use really associated with the development of aortic aneurysms (Jack Janetzki)
  • Amongst people with psoriasis, does exposure to Risankizumab increase the risk of venous thromboembolism while on treatment relative to other biologic therapies? (Zenas Yiu)
  • Characterization: incidence of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) during Multiple Sclerosis (MS) biologic exposure (Thamir Alshammary)
  • Intravitreal Anti-VEGF and Kidney Failure (Cindy Cai)

Polling ends Tuesday 03/21 at 11:59 PM EST. We are seeking data partners as well as those looking to contribute to the following areas:

  • Protocol development
  • Database diagnostics
  • Phenotype development and evaluation
  • Analysis design
  • Network study execution
  • Evidence synthesis
  • Results interpretation
  • Publication writing

Come join us in this 8-week journey as we learn together as a community to conduct a network study using OHDSI tools. We will provide support along the way to complete the selected network study and feature weekly tutorials on OHDSI best practices.

We have now kicked off the SOS challenge and plan to move all four studies along! One such exciting study, lead by Cindy Cai of John Hopkins investigates Intravitreal Anti-VEGF and Kidney Failure. The overall objective of the proposal is to estimate the comparative risk of kidney failure associated with intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor exposure in patients with blinding diseases. You can learn more about this study here.

Thanks to those who have already opted in to participate in this study as a data partner @Paul_Nagy @hripcsa @Khyzer_Aziz @mvanzandt @scottduvall @thomasfalconer @clairblacketer @Andrew @Adam_Black @Jill_Hardin @rmakadia @JamesBrash @stephanieshong @Evan_Minty @NITIN_B_PARIKH @TMU_jasonhsu @ssp @Phan_Thanh_Phuc We hoping many more will join us if you haven’t yet done so. Please reach out to Cindy before April 4th if you would like to join her on her journey of completing this network study over the next 2 months.

The upcoming week April 4th tutorial will focus on data diagnostics, followed up with office hours for debugging any issues with the code you will be asked to run.

For discussions focused on this study please use the MS teams channel, SOS Challenge-Anti-VEGF and Kidney disease

Another exciting study going live is led by @jackjanetzki @Nicole_Pratt , University of South Australia, @SCYou and other members of Yonsei University, titled Is fluoroquinolone use really associated with the development of aortic aneurysms and aortic dissections? This study will describe the incidence and time-to event of aortic aneurysm and aortic dissections following exposure to fluoroquinolone antibiotics. The study will also draw comparisons between fluoroquinolone antibiotics and other antibiotics used to treat the same infection and risk of aortic outcomes. A risk prediction model will also be developed to determine the probability that a patient will go on to have an aortic aneurysm or dissection following exposure to a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. You can learn more about this study here.

Thanks to @Adam_Black @conovermitch @Yudha_Eri_Saputra @thomasfalconer @hripcsa @TMU_jasonhsu @Jill_Hardin @Chungsoo_Kim @rmakadia @mbrand @Evan_Minty @danielmorales @ssp @RossW @Azza_Shoaibi @solie @mvanzandt @jweave17 @Andrew who have already opted in as data partners. We are hoping many more will join us. If you would like to join Jack and his study team on their journey of completing this network study over the next 2 months as a data partner, please reach out before April 4th.

The upcoming April 4th tutorial will focus on data diagnostics, followed up with office hours for debugging any issues with the code you will be asked to run.

For discussions focused on this study please use the MS teams channel, SOS Challenge-Fluoroquinolone Study.

@Thamir’s exciting study, titled, Characterization: incidence of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) during Multiple Sclerosis (MS) biologic exposure aims to describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of MS patients who are using high-efficacy infusion and injectable biological medications and developed the outcome of interest (i.e., PML). You can learn more about this study here.

Thanks to @Adam_Black @hripcsa @Jill_Hardin @rmakadia @Evan_Minty @mvanzandt who have already opted in as data partners. We are hoping many more will join us. If you would like to join Thamir on his journey of completing this network study over the next 2 months as a data partner, please reach out before April 4th.

The upcoming April 4th tutorial will focus on data diagnostics, followed up with office hours for debugging any issues with the code you will be asked to run.

For discussions focused on this study please use the MS teams channel, SOS Challenge- PML incidence during MS treatment.

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Zenas Yiu, University of Manchester study titled, Amongst people with psoriasis, does exposure to Risankizumab increase the risk of venous thromboembolism while on treatment relative to other biologic therapies? is also being done asynchronously. This study compares the risk of cerebrovascular accident, as well as other major adverse cardiovascular events, in people with psoriasis starting Risankizumab with people with psoriasis starting other biologic therapies. You can learn more about this study here.

Thanks to @jswerdel @TMU_jasonhsu @Adam_Black @hripcsa @Brad_Rechkemmer @Jill_Hardin @rmakadia @Evan_Minty @mvanzandt @thomasfalconer who have already opted in as data partners. We are hoping many more will join us. If you would like to join Thamir on his journey of completing this network study over the next 2 months as a data partner, please reach out before April 4th.

The upcoming April 4th tutorial will focus on data diagnostics, followed up with office hours for debugging any issues with the code you will be asked to run.

For discussions focused on this study please use the MS teams channel, SOS Challenge- Exposure to Risankizumab.

Data partners, quick reminder to run dbDiagnostics and send us your aggregated results by submitting to @clairblacketer. You can learn everything you need to know about running dbProfile and dbDiagnostics by watching one or both tutorial sessions:

  1. Session 1 used the Anti-VEGF and End Stage Renal Disease study as an example of how to run dbDiagnostics and,
  2. Session 2 used the Fluoroquinolone study which looks at it’s use and associations with the development of aortic aneurysms.

You can also download the R package and follow the instructions on How to Run and Upload dbProfile Results • DbDiagnostics.

If you have any issues, running or sharing your results we can help you, please let us know.

Data partners, quick reminder to run dbDiagnostics and send us your aggregated results by submitting to @clairblacketer. You can learn everything you need to know about running dbProfile and dbDiagnostics by watching one or both tutorial sessions:

  1. Session 1 used the Anti-VEGF and End Stage Renal Disease study as an example of how to run dbDiagnostics and,
  2. Session 2 used the Fluoroquinolone study which looks at it’s use and associations with the development of aortic aneurysms.

You can also download the R package and follow the instructions on How to Run and Upload dbProfile Results • DbDiagnostics.

If you have any issues, running or sharing your results we can help you, please let us know.

As you may know, we are conducting on MS and PML ( SOS Challenge- PML incidence during MS treatment) and we are writing the clinical definition of MS to look at the MS definition that I have wrote in the study protocol. I would love to have a “Neurologist” to look at these definitions to help with them. Also, @Azza_Shoaibi @Gowtham_Rao @Adam_Black @agolozar and others to help with phenotyping. You can also discuss that in the MS Teams channel; SOS Challenge- PML incidence during MS treatment
@jmcleggon @Patrick_Ryan

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