Generating Robust Evidence with Multi-institutional EHR Data

Department of Epidemiology Seminar Series

Open to the public

Speaker:

Tianxi Cai, ScD
John Rock Professor of Population and Translational Data Sciences
Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Abstract: While clinical trials and cohort studies remain critical sources for studying disease progression and treatment response, they have limitations including the generalizability of the study findings to the real world, the limited ability to examine subgroup effects or test broader hypotheses, and the cost in performing these studies. In recent years, due to the increasing adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and the linkage of EHR with specimen bio-repositories and other research registries, integrated large datasets now open opportunities to generate real-world evidence (RWE). Generating reliable RWE with EHR studies, however, remain highly challenging due to heterogeneity across healthcare centers in their patient population and health dynamics. In addition, sharing detailed patient-level data across institutions remains infeasible due to privacy constraints. In this talk, I will discuss federated approaches to generating RWE using multi-institutional EHR data.