Methods for enhancing the reproducibility of biomedical research findings using electronic health records

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Abstract

The ability of external investigators to reproduce published scientific findings is critical for the evaluation and validation of biomedical research by the wider community. However, a substantial proportion of health research using electronic health records (EHR), data collected and generated during clinical care, is potentially not reproducible mainly due to the fact that the implementation details of most data preprocessing, cleaning, phenotyping and analysis approaches are not systematically made available or shared. With the complexity, volume and variety of electronic health record data sources made available for research steadily increasing, it is critical to ensure that scientific findings from EHR data are reproducible and replicable by researchers. Reporting guidelines, such as RECORD and STROBE, have set a solid foundation by recommending a series of items for researchers to include in their research outputs. Researchers however often lack the technical tools and methodological approaches to actuate such recommendations in an efficient and sustainable manner.