IGF::OT::IGF DATA MANAGEMENT & HARMONIZATION ACROSS THE CANCER EPIDEMIOLOGY COHORTS, CONTRACT #GS-23F-8144H, SIN 874-1

Westat, Inc., Rockville MD

Investigators

Abstract

The National Cancer Institute?s (NCI) Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program (EGRP) supports large-scale collaborations across numerous cancer epidemiology cohorts. The collaborative approach would be enhanced by more easily accessible, centralized, and searchable information. To address the need for better collaborative research and increased transparency, a publicly accessible Cancer Epidemiology Descriptive Cohort Database (CEDCD) (Phase I) has been created. The CEDCD contains descriptive information about existing cohorts (e.g., study design, eligibility criteria, enrollment numbers, scope of content domains collected, numbers of biospecimens, number of cancer and other health outcomes), with the intention of increasing transparency and scientific quality and collaboration through public access to the cancer cohorts? descriptive information. Under Phase II, the Contractor is developing a controlled access database of harmonized data (Cohort Metadata Repository (CMR)), which will include sufficient flexibility to ensure the database can accommodate data generated through additional cohort studies. The Contractor is using existing open-source software DataSHaPER., for the CMR. The software meets the stated requirements to organize and search metadata and associated documentation and questionnaires. It includes a taxonomy to allow variables to be tagged and filtered by content domain to easily find like variables for harmonization across cohorts. Currently, the Contractor is focusing efforts on populating the CMR with the meta-data from the 32 participating CECs.