FinOMOP consortium uses OMOP CDM for real-world data studies milestone

In 2020, FinOMOP began integrating Finnish medical terms into the OMOP CDM, generating interest across universities. Enhanced collaboration led to nationwide mappings, and a recent acceptance into the Darwin EU network marked a milestone for real-world data (RWD) studies.

The integration of Finnish medical terms into the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) began as a research collaboration initiative. The potential use of tools developed by Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) for cohort-building, case-control comparisons, visualizations, and analytics garnered interest across all Finnish University Hospitals, the University of Helsinki, and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). To enhance interoperability, the collaboration among Finnish University hospitals was strengthened, ensuring consistent nationwide OMOP mappings and ongoing procedural alignment. Currently, the FinOMOP consortium is formalizing its partnership, with agreements signed by host organizations, including five university hospitals and THL.

The initiative, supported by funding from the European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN) project, has resulted in the development of the first versions of OMOP databases. Creating a regularly updated copy of patient data in the OMOP CDM requires a robust transformation process for hospitals’ non-standard data structures. In the Finnish hospitals, data is extracted from tens of operational patient IT systems into a data lake for secondary use. The relevant row-level data is identified, combined through person ID, and mapped using the OMOP CDM ETL process. Fully operational OMOP databases now exist in University Hospitals of Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku, covering a catchment population of 3.2 million, or 60% of the Finnish population.

Despite varying data source ages, overall coverage for secondary and tertiary care data has been good since 2010, with electronic prescriptions included since 2013. Mapped patient data includes clinical and pathology diagnoses, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, laboratory values, drugs administered in hospitals, and electronic prescriptions. Furthermore, THL has mapped nationwide secondary care data for given diagnoses and procedures since 2015.

This fall, FinOMOP began a pilot study in three therapeutic areas for the Finnish Medicines Agency, rigorously testing the Finnish data providers’ network, licensing authorities, and the 2020 Finnish act on the secondary use of patient data. Although the patient data was shown to be valid, deep, and comprehensive, the new legislation created challenges, slowing down effective collaboration among university hospitals. Despite these challenges, the FinOMOP consortium’s recent acceptance into the Darwin EU network marks a significant milestone, enabling further exploration and development of best practices for high-quality RWD studies.

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The information provided is from a blog post on the EHDEN website.