Summary
Objectives: To summarize key contributions to current research in the field of Clinical Research
Informatics (CRI) and to select best papers published in 2017.
Method: A bibliographic search using a combination of MeSH descriptors and free 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. A
consensus meeting between the two section editors and the editorial team was organized
to finally conclude on the selection of best papers.
Results: Among the 741 returned papers published in 2017 in the various areas of CRI, the
full review process selected five best papers. The first best paper reports on the
implementation of consent management considering patient preferences for the use of
de-identified data of electronic health records for research. The second best paper
describes an approach using natural language processing to extract symptoms of severe
mental illness from clinical text. The authors of the third best paper describe the
challenges and lessons learned when leveraging the EHR4CR platform to support patient
inclusion in academic studies in the context of an important collaboration between
private industry and public health institutions. The fourth best paper describes a
method and an interactive tool for case-crossover analyses of electronic medical records
for patient safety. The last best paper proposes a new method for bias reduction in
association studies using electronic health records data.
Conclusions: Research in the CRI field continues to accelerate and to mature, leading to tools
and platforms deployed at national or international scales with encouraging results.
Beyond securing these new platforms for exploiting large-scale health data, another
major challenge is the limitation of biases related to the use of “real-world” data.
Controlling these biases is a prerequisite for the development of learning health
systems.
Keywords
International Medical Informatics Association Yearbook - Clinical Research Informatics
- Biomedical Research, Clinical Trials as Topic - Observational studies as Topic -
Real-world data - Phenotyping
