OpenSAFELY workshop

Workshop info:

Date: Wednesday 7th October

Timings: 10:30-15:30, workshop lunch provided 12:30-13:30

Location: Main campus, in-person event

Note: This is an interactive session so please bring a laptop.

Title: Understanding and working with electronic health record data using OpenSAFELY

Summary: GP electronic health record (EHR) data is widely recognised as a critical national data asset, but few people understand how best to use it to deliver high-quality analyses that drive clinical quality improvement, innovation, planning, and research. Through a series of talks and practical exercises, this workshop will explain what EHRs are and how OpenSAFELY enables transparent and reproducible use of EHR data. Participants will learn how EHR data is structured and coded, how to develop and use clinical codelists, and how to define meaningful research variables from real-world clinical records. We will explore OpenSAFELY’s approach to privacy, transparency and reproducibility, and participants will get practical experience of working with tools such as ehrQL, OpenSAFELY’s query language for creating patient-level research-ready datasets from the underlying records. The workshop will also showcase the breadth of research possible with EHR data, from descriptive and longitudinal studies to comparative effectiveness research and predictive modelling. We will also consider the emerging opportunities and challenges of using AI with health data.