EHDEN Academy used in 100 countries worldwide in all regions, training thousands to date

We are delighted that the EHDEN Academy has reached the remarkable milestone of course users in 100 countries, a rapid expansion since its launch as part of the IMI EHDEN project in April 2020. With almost 3,500 course enrollees since launch, this is an excellent start and foundation to the Academy and our vision of providing accessible, high quality training courses to support researchers in conducting observational, real world research, especially utilising datasets mapped to the OMOP common data model, and utilising OHDSI standardised analytical tools.

The Academy has been central to EHDEN’s vision, becoming a trusted observational research ecosystem to enable better health decisions, outcomes and care, in supporting training of key stakeholders from Small-to-Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and Data Partners, and broadening across different disciplines and roles in the research community.

 

Fig 1. Current coverage of EHDEN Academy course users worldwide

 

The Academy now has 17 courses across tools, skills and methods domains, emerging learning pathways in different disciplines, and in collaboration with EHDEN Consortium Partner, The European Patients Forum, a non-expert/lay course on the basic aspects of real world data, evidence generation, technologies, and protections. We will continue to add to this content and build out more learning pathways.

"It is quite humbling to consider we have been able to support training across 100 countries worldwide, and although numbers in some countries are small, it’s a significant start. All praise ought to go to the small team and all the course creators who have given up their time to create what the Academy is now. There is a critical international need for upskilling and training in the disciplines required to conduct quality observational research."

Nigel Hughes

EHDEN Project Lead, Academy Director, and Director, Epidemiology, Janssen Global R&D

The Academy has also more recently instituted work on analysis of the Academy’s performance to underpin continual improvement, including the analysis of this and other channels by OHDSI.

"I am honored to be a member of the EHDEN Academy Project Management Team. At Johns Hopkins, the EHDEN academy is a tremendous resource for our graduate training in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science and should be a staple to graduate education in our field. In OHDSI, we see the strength of multiple disciplines coming together to advance open science, and in utilising health data based on excellent training and education."

Prof. Paul Nagy

Deputy Director, Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center, Associate Professor of Radiology and Radiological Science, and OHDSI Titan Award recipient 2022

More about Prof Nagy’s role and perspective can be heard via his Voice of EHDEN podcast episode.

The EHDEN Academy is planned to transition to the EHDEN not-for-profit legal entity later this year as part of its overall sustainability plan post-IMI in 2024, and we look forward to providing even more quality training to even more course users in this growing global community.