Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (Jun 2020)

4549 Reproducible Informatics for Reproducible Translational Research

  • Ram Gouripeddi,
  • Katherine Sward,
  • Mollie Cummins,
  • Karen Eilbeck,
  • Bernie LaSalle,
  • Julio C. Facelli

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2020.221
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4
pp. 66 – 67

Abstract

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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Characterize formal informatics methods and approaches for enabling reproducible translational research. Education of reproducible methods to translational researchers and informaticians. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We performed a scoping review [1] of selected informatics literature (e.g. [2,3]) from PubMed and Scopus. In addition we reviewed literature and documentation of translational research informatics projects [4–21] at the University of Utah. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The example informatics projects we identified in our literature covered a broad spectrum of translational research. These include research recruitment, research data requisition, study design and statistical analysis, biomedical vocabularies and metadata for data integration, data provenance and quality, and uncertainty. Elements impacting reproducibility of research include (1) Research Data: its semantics, quality, metadata and provenance; and (2) Research Processes: study conduct including activities and interventions undertaken, collections of biospecimens and data, and data integration. The informatics methods and approaches we identified as enablers of reproducibility include the use of templates, management of workflows and processes, scalable methods for managing data, metadata and semantics, appropriate software architectures and containerization, convergence methods and uncertainty quantification. In addition these methods need to be open and shareable and should be quantifiable to measure their ability to achieve reproducibility. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: The ability to collect large volumes of data collection has ballooned in nearly every area of science, while the ability to capturing research processes hasn’t kept with this pace. Potential for problematic research practices and irreproducible results are concerns.