Welcome to OHDSI! - Please introduce yourself

[Matthew_Scotch]

Hello,
Matthew Scotch here. Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Arizona State University. My background is in molecular and genomic epidemiology and using phylodynamics to study the evolution and spread of RNA viruses for public health surveillance. I focus a lot on flu but, like many others, have spent a lot of time on SARS-CoV-2.

For this group, I am interested in how we can add virus genetics (DNA sequence of the patient’s pathogen) to the EHR and aid in personalized decision making for patient infections.
Regards, Matthew

[Mee (Mary Ejiwale)]

Hello!
I am a PhD student in the Biomedical and Health Informatics program of the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. I started my career as a Registered Nurse and a Registered Midwife, before diversifying into the world of computing and health informatics. I can’t forget the good feeling that came with running my first successfully-written code; sure you know what that is- “Hello World” Anyway, merging these dexterities get me motivated as I try to leverage my few skills to better serve humanity. This quest led me to be part of a COVID-19 international project. As a matter of fact, I actually got to know about OHDSI in our “hunt” for individual-level COVID-19 dataset (still hunting:)). I’m open to sharing and learning from others as I go. Thanks for putting this forum and the ODHSI organization together!
Let me stop here, some assignments are waiting on me (The life of a PhD student)

[krfeeney (Kristin Kostka, MPH)]

Welcome to ALL of you (@Nael @gschadow @Yuri @nmodi @zhaolili @jpegilbert @Preston @tsyoun @MathildeFruchart @lauren @kmace @victorb @JPHubaux @fmarino @Matthew_Scotch @mee)!! You’ve picked an incredible time to Join the Journey.

If you have noticed, we have moved our community calls to Zoom: New Details to Join OHDSI community Calls - #2. Make sure to add this to your calendar. (And get your Zoom backgrounds ready! )

The community is so excited to be able to respond to these important public health challenges. The COVID activity, as in all places, is fast and furious. If you’re interested, take a spin through this update page and reach out to me if you have any topics you’re passionate about: COVID-19 Updates Page – OHDSI

In the short order, have you looked at the Book of OHDSI (book.ohdsi.org)? This is a great place to learn about some of the jargon we throw around here (PLE, PLP, New User Cohorts, ATLAS, CDM,Vocabualaries).

You can also find our old recorded tutorials here: Past Events – OHDSI
@Rijnbeek and team recently launched the EHDEN Academy: EHDEN Academy: Course categories
^ This is a phenomenal new resource that helps talk through topics like Extract, Transform and Load processes for CDM conversions, Infrastructures, and the Analytics.

We can’t wait to have you all engaged in your niches within the community!!
Kristin

And special shout out to:
@Hilda, hello my longtime friend!! I am so excited to do more research with you.
@Xiaoqian_Jiang - it’s nice to see you here! We know you are doing great work in the NCATs community for OHDSI. Thank you for all you do!

P.S. If you need anything, email me at kostka[at]ohdsi.org. I will do my best to connect you to the right folks!!

[myriamalexander]

Hi,
I am Myriam Alexander. I am an epidemiologist statistician with experience in very large scale epidemiological studies. I recently published a paper with several colleagues involved in the OHDSI network, via another collaboration called the Euopean Medical Information Framework. The publication can be found at https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l5367. I would be eager to become involved in COVD-19 related projects, and use my previous experience to support any epidemiology, statistical or data analysis aspects of those projects.
Professionally, I have been working in academia at the University of Cambridge and UCL in the UK, as well as in pharmaceutical company including GSK and Roche, and am currently a scientific consultant at OPEN Health.

[y7g2p (Anna)]

I am a researcher in HEOR (Health Economics and Outcomes Research) over 15 years in the US, would love to contribute to any relevant topics and studies in data analysis, statistics, method design or communications. Free feel to connect with me please.

[Robert_Clark]

Hello, new member here. I’m an adjunct professor of Math at Widener University.
Even though my background is not health science, like everyone else in the world I’m interested in bringing the COVID-19 epidemic to an end as soon as possible.

Bob Clark

[MauraBeaton]

Welcome @myriamalexander, @y7g2p, @Robert_Clark and all other newcomers! A great place to get started is our New to OHDSI page on OHDSI.org, which lists upcoming meetings for the week. Joining working group meetings is a great way to see what’s happening in the community!

[lkubendran]

Hello All
I am new to this OHDSI community, I am Lakshmi Kubendran from Global-Value-Web, I am currently working with ETL implementation and Data Analytics .
We have an in-house expertise who are willing to work on patient records and convert them into OHDSI OMOP CDM model.

Willing to learn more from you all!
Thanks
Lakshmi K

[jswetha (swethakiran)]

Hi Everyone,

I am Dr.Swetha kiran and working with GVW technologies. I’m new to OHDSI concepts but have a lot of enthusiasm to learn more about it. I am here to gain knowledge on OHDSI OMOP and I just now started to dive into the OHDSI tools. I really want to engage with the OHDSI community and learning more about the CDM and data analysis.

Glad to be here and look forward to getting involved!

[maheswari (Maheswari Rajasekaran)]

Hello everyone,
I am Maheswari Rajasekaran from GVW technologies. I have a PhD in pharmacology. In our company, we are working on OMOP CDM and other OHDSI tools. I am looking forward to participate in OHDSI community events and learn a lot from others in the community.
Regards
Maheswari

[Arnaud-CH31]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Arnaud Bethencourt and I am a consultant focusing on the generation of global value/argumentation dossier for the Medtech/IVD industry mainly. I am leading within my current company Medows Sarl our efforts to structure european medico-administrative data into the CDM.
I am looking forward to collaborate on the medical device part, mostly on the Healthcare system data and economic data implementation of the CDM.
I would love to also initiate discussions around the development of standardized ETL queries to support device argumentation analytic to healthcare system.

Already using mapping softwares from OHSDI internally and really thrived about the recent launch of the educational platform.

Glad to be here and great applause to all the initiatives that have been made over the past years, incredible times, with endless analytical possibilities to build up Healthcare Future.

[cba2125 (Christopher Anderson)]

Hello OHDSI!

My name is Chris Anderson and I am a urologic oncologist at Columbia University in New York City. I treat many patients with bladder cancer and administer a fair amount of an immunotherapy called BCG to treat certain stages of bladder cancer. BCG is also used as a tuberculosis vaccine in many countries around the world.

During the current COVID pandemic, there have been some interesting observations about BCG being protective of COVID infection. The OHDSI network could be uniquely poised to answer questions about this possible relationship.

If anyone is interested in collaborating, please reach out!

Thanks,

Chris

[SCYou (Seng Chan You)]

Hello @cba2125. Unfortunately, Korea is one of the endemic countries for tuberculosis, so all Korean people get the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis, usually in their youth.
And there have been fewer than five new cases of daily COVID-19 originating in Korea recently.

I don’t know how we can prove the link between BCG vaccines and COVID-19 infections, but welcome to the community.

[Robert_Clark]

Hello OHDSI!
My name is Chris Anderson and I am a urologic oncologist at Columbia University in New York City. I treat many patients with bladder cancer and administer a fair amount of an immunotherapy called BCG to treat certain stages of bladder cancer. BCG is also used as a tuberculosis vaccine in many countries around the world.
During the current COVID pandemic, there have been some interesting observations about BCG being protective of COVID infection. The OHDSI network could be uniquely poised to answer questions about this possible relationship.
If anyone is interested in collaborating, please reach out!
Thanks,
Chris

Yes, I am interested. See discussion here:

Big Data search for effective medications

My proposal was to search for medications in the reverse sense, by looking for drugs missing from patients medical histories, suggesting the drug might be protective against the disease. But that article above shows big-data can find effective medications in the direct sense, by reviewing large data sets of patients medical histories looking for drugs that patients with positive outcomes had in common. The article explains the doctors in China noticed rural patients with severe disease survivin…

I had thought that we would need hundreds of thousands to millions of cases to review to be able to find effective medications by looking at collected medical histories alone. But as I indicated in that comment, I think we can find useful associations from using just a few thousand cases. Note then there are now several reported studies around the world reviewing COVID-19 patients medical histories at a few thousand cases, such as the New York study I mentioned in that comment.

Robert Clark

[Robert_Clark]

Hello @cba2125. Unfortunately, Korea is one of the endemic countries for tuberculosis, so all Korean people get the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis, usually in their youth.
And there have been fewer than five new cases of daily COVID-19 originating in Korea recently.
I don’t know how we can prove the link between BCG vaccines and COVID-19 infections, but welcome to the community

Perhaps we could compare recent immigrants to Korea or long-term visitors who have not received the vaccine to see if they contract the virus in higher numbers.

Robert Clark

[fred.lapolla]

Hi all, I am Fred LaPolla, a medical librarian at NYU Langone Health. I am learning about OHDSI so that we can provide support to our researchers doing COVID-19 research.

[zotydelamota]

Hello Everybody, My name is Zoty De La Mota and I am a professional data architect/engineer/scientist and I am thrilled to have join this awesome community. Looking forward to the collaboration of the development encompassed in the mission of such community.

[kristina.lindsley]

Hello everyone! I’m Kristina Lindsley and my area of focus for the last 15 years has been in systematic reviews and evidence synthesis. Most of my professional life so far was at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health - in the Center for Clinical Trials and Department of Epidemiology. Now I am at IBM Watson Health in the Life Science group, helping to jump start it’s Literature-based Research Services group. I’m hoping my experience and training will be a useful contribution to the wonderful and diverse community here and am looking forward to learning and collaborating with OHDSI.

[ajyoung (Andrew Young)]

Hello!

I am finishing up my fellowship in trauma, surgical critical care, and emergency general surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. I will be moving to Columbus, Ohio soon to start as a faculty member at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

My interests include traumatic falls, surgical infections, cervical spine injury, sepsis, and improving access to data that allows surgeons to make better decisions. I have a bit of programming experience from my undergraduate degree in computer science. I am excited to join the OHDSI community and see how I can contribute.

Regards
Andrew

[markkramerus (Mark Kramer)]

Hello Chris,
I am with the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition (c19hcc.org), and we are starting an observational study to investigate just what you are describing with BCG. We planned it just today, in fact. We have the largest EHR vendors in the US cooperating, so we can access quite a lot of data.
I’m new on this forum, you might want to email me at mkramer@mitre.org
Mark Kramer