Foundation Platforms
Isaac Kohane, MD Ph D
Professor & Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School
Board Chairman of the i2b2 tranSMART Foundation
A Message from Isaac Kohane
Right from the start, in March 2020, it was clear that there were going to be numerous international research studies collecting and analyzing data on COVID-19 patients. But those of us with experience with system-wide data, particularly EHR-derived data knew that we were facing a tall order. We had to move fast because the need was urgent. Yet, given the heterogeneity of our institutions and practices, how could we develop a reliable big picture of what was happening to our patients? Launched in March, 2020, 4CE is a unique project that engages local experts in informatics, statistics and clinical medicine at more than 350 hospitals across 9 countries on 4 continents to iteratively improve sites’ data quality, understand the limitations of EHR data on COVID-19 patients, and conduct rapid analyses through a federated model that reduces barriers to participation. We believe that early intelligence is worth more than complete intelligence later. Our goal is to move quickly, publish results, and share lessons learned with others.
With generous support from
i2b2 Global South Network
This consortium consists of health-care institutions in limited-resource settings that are leveraging the i2b2 platform for facilitating the use of EHR data for clinical research, hospital operations and education. Currently the consortium includes sites from India and Nepal and is seeking to expand to other regions. This collaboration is to developed a resilient and cost-effective software stack suited for deployment in the low-resource setting.
Diane Keogh
Executive Director
Diane.Keogh@i2b2transmart.org
From The Executive Director’s Desk
COVID-19 Action!
In this time of great need, the i2b2 community is working to combine national and international analyses of the COVID-19 affliction on our patients.
There are two major initiatives that the Foundation is participating in at this time.
Grant to the Foundation from Dell Technologies
First, we are delighted to announce that Dell Technologies has given the Foundation a significant grant to expedite three projects that are focused on COVID-19 research working towards better understanding diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the disease. The three projects will be described in detail in upcoming Community Meetings. They are:
- Public tranSMART v19 platform running on AWS with datasets that become publicly available. This project is in collaboration with Axiomedix.
- With the explosion of articles and research labs studying the corona virus (over 6,000 articles from 25,000 authors), a special version of Profiles is being developed by Griffin Weber and will be available publicly.
- i2b2 and tranSMART are being synchronized to the same data model so that direct data sharing will be possible between the Foundation platforms. We will have a few use cases and sample deployments available in the coming months.
4CE Consortium
Second, I want to tell you about the 4CE Consortium that was launched by Dr. Zak Kohane and several members of our Board of Directors. This urgent initiative with organizations around the world allowed labs with i2b2 to rapidly collect aggregate data on hospitalized patients that are COVID-19 positive. Their first publication is available as a preprint (click here) and will be published soon.
i2b2 ACT COVID ontology that has been developed
An initial ACT COVID ontology has been developed by the ACT Harmonization Committee. Note: Implementing this ontology is not necessary for this initial submission, but it might be helpful for you to look at the codes it uses as you try to identify your population of COVID-19 positive patients. click here for ACT COVID ontology
More information will be published here on our website as it becomes available. Be sure to join our Community Meetings and please attend the 2020 Harvard Virtual Symposium which will include focused sessions on these and other COVID-19 related projects.
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