Clinical Research Informatics: Contributions from 2023

TL;DR

This paper summarizes the top 2023 contributions to Clinical Research Informatics, focusing on health data reusability, quality assessment, and metadata management.

Contribution

Highlights three best papers from 2023 on provenance metadata, computable phenotypes, and automated health data quality tools.

Findings

A provenance metadata framework was developed in Germany for health data reuse and quality assessment.

A methodology for generating computable phenotypes and covariates for e-phenotype validation was presented.

A review of automated tools for health data quality assessment was conducted.

Abstract

Objectives
: To summarize key contributions to current research in the field of Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) and to select the best papers published in 2023.

Methods
: A bibliographic search using a combination of MeSH descriptors and free-text terms on CRI was performed using PubMed, followed by a double-blind review in order to select a list of candidate best papers to be then peer-reviewed by external reviewers. After peer-review ranking, a consensus meeting between the two section editors and the editorial team was organized to finally conclude on the selected three best papers.

Results
: Among the 1,119 papers returned by the search, published in 2023, that were in the scope of the various areas of CRI, the full review process selected three best papers. The first best paper describes the process undertaken in Germany, under the national Medical Informatics Initiative, to define and validate a provenance metadata framework to enable the interpretation including quality assessment of health data reused for research. The authors of the second-best paper present a methodology for the generation of computable phenotypes and the covariates associated with success rates in e-phenotype validation. The third-best presents a review of published and accessible tools that enable the assessment of health data quality through an automated process. This year's survey paper marks the tenth anniversary of the CRI section of the Yearbook by reviewing the dominant themes within CRI over the past decade and the major milestone innovations within this field.

Conclusions
: The literature relevant to CRI in 2023 has largely been populated by publications that assess and enhance the reusability of health data for clinical research, in particular data quality assessment and metadata management.