Bridging the gap: A library‐based collaboration to enhance data skills for clinical researchers

Abstract

Introduction Enterprise data warehouses (EDWs) serve as foundational infrastructure in a modern learning health system, housing clinical and other system‐wide data and making it available for research, strategic, and quality improvement purposes. Building on a longstanding partnership between Northwestern University's Galter Health Sciences Library and the Northwestern Medicine Enterprise Data Warehouse (NMEDW), an end‐to‐end clinical research data management (cRDM) program was created to enhance clinical data workforce capacity and further expand related library‐based services for the campus. Methods The training program covers topics such as clinical database architecture, clinical coding standards, and translation of research questions into queries for proper data extraction. Here we describe this program, including partners and motivations, technical and social components, integration of FAIR principles into clinical data research workflows, and the long‐term implications for this work to serve as a blueprint of best practice workflows for clinical research to support library and EDW partnerships at other institutions. Results This training program has enhanced the partnership between our institution's health sciences library and clinical data warehouse to provide support services for researchers, resulting in more efficient training workflows. Through instruction on best practices for preserving and sharing outputs, researchers are given the tools to improve the reproducibility and reusability of their work, which has positive effects for the researchers as well as for the university. All training resources have been made publicly available so that those who support this critical need at other institutions can build on our efforts. Conclusions Library‐based partnerships to support training and consultation offer an important vehicle for clinical data science capacity building in learning health systems. The cRDM program launched by Galter Library and the NMEDW is an example of this type of partnership and builds on a strong foundation of past collaboration, expanding the scope of clinical data support services and training on campus.

Northwestern University resource and education development initiatives to advance collaborative artificial intelligence across the learning health system

“…Supporting these endeavors are collaborative efforts across campus, involving NUCATS, the Northwestern University Institute for AI in Medicine, the Department of Medical Education, and more, all working together to create a supportive ecosystem for AI in healthcare 85 . Our educational resources, including tutorials and course modules, are openly available, adhering to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).…”

“…Supporting these endeavors are collaborative efforts across campus, involving NUCATS, the Northwestern University Institute for AI in Medicine, the Department of Medical Education, and more, all working together to create a supportive ecosystem for AI in healthcare. 85 Our educational resources, including tutorials and course modules, are openly available, adhering to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). We are also incorporating CARE Principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) for Indigenous Data Governance 86 to ensure our training programs are equity‐focused and interdisciplinary.…”