Drug safety
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There has been increased interest in using multiple observational databases to understand the safety profile of medical products during the postmarketing period. However, it is challenging to perform analyses across these heterogeneous data sources. The Observational Medical Outcome Partnership (OMOP) provides a Common Data Model (CDM) for organizing and standardizing databases. OMOP's work with the CDM has primarily focused on US databases. As a participant in the OMOP Extended Consortium, we implemented the OMOP CDM on the UK Electronic Healthcare Record database-The Health Improvement Network (THIN). ⋯ This research demonstrated that information loss due to incomplete mapping of medical and drug codes as well as data structure in the current CDM THIN limits its use for all possible epidemiological evaluation studies. Current HOIs and DOIs predefined by the OMOP were constructed with minimal loss of information and can be used for active surveillance methodological research. The OMOP CDM THIN can be a valuable tool for multiple aspects of pharmacoepidemiological research when the unique features of UK Electronic Health Records are incorporated in the OMOP library.