The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) is a standardized framework designed by the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community. This open-science community aims to improve the quality of healthcare by providing guidelines for a more harmonized approach to data science.
The utilization of disparate software systems across hospitals, each with their proprietary data models, poses a significant challenge to research studies and complicates data analysis. Even when the data is structured, the data models are often not compatible. The OMOP CDM addresses this challenge by offering a common standardized model for representing health-related data from diverse sources. This facilitates observational research and analysis across varied healthcare organizations.
OMOP CDM for data standardization
The data model is organized as a relational database structure. The data structure comprises tables representing various aspects of patient information, clinical events (such as diagnoses and procedures), and healthcare observations (such as vital signs and other clinical measurements). This relational structure allows a wide range of healthcare data to be represented in a standardized manner. The tables have fixed columns linked to each other to enable researchers to query and analyze data across multiple dimensions, with standardized vocabularies further enhancing consistency and interoperability.
In the architecture below, a patient (PERSON) can have certain conditions (CONDITION_OCCURRENCE) and is hospitalized (VISIT_OCCURRENCE) to have surgery to cure one of these conditions. The procedure (PROCEDURE_OCCURRENCE) is performed by a clinician (PROVIDER) working in a specific healthcare facility (CARE_SITE). The observation (OBSERVATION) linked to the patient could be their BMI at a specific moment.
OMOP CDM for terminology
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