Unlocking the Power of Data Harmonization in Environmental Health Sciences: A Comprehensive Exploration of Significance, Use Cases, and Recommendations for Standardization Efforts.

IF 10.1 1区 环境科学与生态学 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Jeanette A Stingone, H C Bledsoe, Grace Cooney, Mireya Diaz-Insua, Elaine Faustman, Karamarie Fecho, Ramkiran Gouripeddi, Philip Holmes, David Kaeli, Oswaldo Lozoya, Anna Maria Masci, Hina Narayan, Charles Schmitt, Maria Shatz, Wren Tracy
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: The field of environmental health sciences increasingly demands comprehensive and diverse datasets, particularly in response to emerging research areas such as climate change, mixtures, and exposomics. The data needed to address the complexity of environmental health research questions often extend beyond the boundaries of a single study or data resource. Traditional data management approaches struggle to harmonize the ever-expanding and heterogeneous data sources needed for research in the environmental health sciences. Harmonization may help address this issue as it involves aligning and standardizing various elements of data to allow comprehensive analysis, data pooling and interpretation across studies.

Objectives: The primary objective is to inform researchers about the transformative potential of embracing harmonization methodologies and to motivate contributions to ongoing efforts, thereby fostering advancements.

Methods: Using the Environmental Health Language Collaborative's Data Harmonization Use Case, we provide a practical illustration of existing data harmonization approaches, identify gaps, and emphasize future research and application directions. We selected two publicly available environmental epidemiology studies on the topic of childhood asthma and three studies on the topic of biomarkers of metals exposure during pregnancy and birth outcomes and applied several existing harmonization approaches to assess interoperability.

Discussion: Our process revealed the potential limitations of many existing harmonization approaches, with notable failures to identify common variables across independent datasets and lack of agreement between human and computer-based approaches. This use case identified various challenges with existing approaches, including reliance on often incomplete data documentation and large amounts of manual effort. To address these challenges, we recommend the continued advancement and dissemination of community data standards, the development of software and tools to facilitate harmonization through automation, and strategic efforts to promote engagement in data harmonization within the environmental health sciences community. Collaborative science is needed to advance our understanding of environmental contributors to health, and realizing the harmonization potential of our scientific data is a step toward improved collaboration. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP15410.

释放环境健康科学中数据协调的力量:对标准化工作的意义、用例和建议的全面探索。
背景:环境健康科学领域日益需要全面和多样化的数据集,特别是在应对气候变化、混合物和暴露学等新兴研究领域时。解决环境卫生研究问题的复杂性所需的数据往往超出单一研究或数据资源的范围。传统的数据管理方法难以协调环境健康科学研究所需的不断扩大和异构的数据源。协调可能有助于解决这一问题,因为它涉及对齐和标准化数据的各种元素,以允许跨研究进行全面分析、数据汇集和解释。目标:主要目标是告知研究人员关于采用统一方法的变革潜力,并激励对正在进行的工作的贡献,从而促进进步。方法:利用环境卫生语言协作的数据协调用例,提供现有数据协调方法的实际说明,找出差距,并强调未来的研究和应用方向。我们选择了两项公开的关于儿童哮喘的环境流行病学研究和三项关于怀孕期间金属暴露的生物标志物和分娩结果的研究,并应用了几种现有的协调方法来评估互操作性。讨论:我们的过程揭示了许多现有协调方法的潜在局限性,特别是在识别独立数据集之间的共同变量方面存在明显的失败,并且在基于人的方法和基于计算机的方法之间缺乏一致性。这个用例确定了现有方法的各种挑战,包括依赖于经常不完整的数据文档和大量的手工工作。为了应对这些挑战,我们建议继续推进和传播社区数据标准,开发软件和工具,通过自动化促进数据协调,并作出战略努力,促进环境卫生科学界参与数据协调。协作科学需要增进我们对环境对健康的影响因素的理解,实现我们科学数据的协调潜力是朝着改进协作迈出的一步。https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP15410。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Environmental Health Perspectives
Environmental Health Perspectives 环境科学-公共卫生、环境卫生与职业卫生
CiteScore
14.40
自引率
2.90%
发文量
388
审稿时长
6 months
期刊介绍: Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is a monthly peer-reviewed journal supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission is to facilitate discussions on the connections between the environment and human health by publishing top-notch research and news. EHP ranks third in Public, Environmental, and Occupational Health, fourth in Toxicology, and fifth in Environmental Sciences.
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