1.2. Standardisation of clinical data & data management.

Responsible: Chris Lawerenz, DKFZ, Heidelberg.

Background:

There exists an ever-increasing need for globally accepted standardised terminologies in biomedical research. The process of establishing such controlled vocabularies is of critical importance, and one that demands continuous efforts, especially to address the emergence of new terms and methodologies. As a German partner in the field of standardization, we facilitate the merging of clinical terms for cancer, neurological disorders and infection/inflammation. Within the scope of NGFN1, international standards together with data and workflow models were incorporated and improved, while quality standards for handling high-throughput data were also established. Standardization of terminology allows the addition of new data produced by any network partner to existing data from other partners. Thus, all network partners are able to analyze the data obtained from all patients and studies conducted.

Planned work:

A pool of parameters will be developed for all clinical networks involved in NGFN2. By supporting the local nodes within these networks, a central instance of vocabulary will be constructed for each. We plan to implement specific core datasets for single clinical networks and NGFN2-wide extended datasets. Both existing and new standard operation procedures (SOPs) will be developed together with our clinical partners. Each of these applications will be established according to the requirements of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the German Reference Centre for Ethics (DRZE).