The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) is a standardized healthcare data model developed by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community. It’s designed to facilitate the analysis of healthcare data from multiple sources, including Electronic Health Records (EHRs), claims data, and other real-world data sources, to enable the efficient analysis of data to produce reliable and comparable evidence about treatments, interventions, and outcomes. The OMOP CDM addresses the challenges of diverse and disparate healthcare databases, by standardising health data into a common format, promoting analysis across different databases, organisations and even countries. Its standardised codes and vocabularies enhance reproducibility, facilitate collaboration, and enable the analysis of large-scale data sets.

By leveraging the OMOP framework, researchers can compare medical interventions’ effectiveness, track patient outcomes over time, identify medication safety concerns, and contribute to evidence-based healthcare decision-making.

The Alliance is working in partnership with other organisations to support adoption of the OMOP common data model in the UK through several activities, which include:

    • Partnership with NHS England: the Data for R&D Programme’s NHS Research Secure Data Environment Network has agreed to adopt OMOP as a common data model. The Alliance is collaborating with NHS England to facilitate the adoption of the OMOP common data model across the SDEs.
    • OMOP Survey: The Alliance conducted a survey of data custodians, data users, and researchers to understand the level of adoption of OMOP and other standards in the UK. The survey results provide insights into data transformation progress, barriers, and ways to support OMOP adoption. Preliminary results of the survey can be found here.
    • OMOP Special Interest Group (SIG): The Alliance convenes an OMOP special interest group, which meets quarterly. The aim of this group is to avoid duplication and foster collaboration through sharing knowledge, experiences, and tools for data transformation to the OMOP common data. Outputs from the previous meetings can be found below. If you are interested in joining the Special Interest Group for OMOP, please complete this form
    • Supporting data Transformation: The Alliance is supporting data custodians in transforming their data sets to OMOP. Through collaboration with the EHDEN consortium,  five new UK data partners have joined the initiative with our support.
    • Real World Evidence Network: HDR UK is funding a new Real-World Evidence Network with the aim of demonstrating the potential of the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) as a powerful tool for conducting efficient, federated research studies across the UK by utilizing data from multiple NHS sources.The Network Coordination Centre, led by Professor Daniel Prieto-Alhambra (Professor of Pharmaco- and Device Epidemiology, and Section Head, Health Data Sciences, Botnar Institute for Musculoskeletal Sciences, part of the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences [NDORMS] at the University of Oxford) seeks to include up to seven hospital and primary care data partners from various regions of the UK. A funding call for data partners will be announced soon, inviting participation from interested organizations. This effort represents a significant step towards harnessing real-world evidence to improve healthcare outcomes and research capabilities across the nation.

Adoption of the OMOP CDM will contribute to more robust and evidence-based healthcare research and decision-making. An emphasis on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and addressing barriers is essential to ensure successful implementation across diverse healthcare settings. To view a list of OMOP data set in the UK click here.

Outputs and News

HDR UK announcement of five new EDHEN data partners

Lifebit Announces collaboration with Genomics England on EDHEN project

Outputs Date Published
Preliminary OMOP Mapping and Survey Results Sep-2023
Poster on OMOP survey Sep-2023
Second OMOP SIG Meeting Report Nov-2023
Second OMOP SIG meeting recording Nov-2023
Inaugural OMOP SIG Meeting Report Jun-2023
Inaugural OMOP SIG meeting recording Jun-2023
techUK and HDR UK OMOP Roundtable Meeting Report Nov-2023

Useful Resources

 

UK Health Data Research Alliance OMOP Special Interest Group meeting

This video is the recent meeting on the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP), Special Interest group meeting offering insights into the Real-World Evidence Network, pediatrics research initiatives, the evolving role of RWE in healthcare innovation and OMOP data mapping across NHS secure data environments.