TraCS Informatics co-director, Emily Pfaff, featured on CTSA webcast educational series

To accelerate translation, researchers need access to a broad range of data from a variety of sources (electronic health records, imaging, genetics, behavioral, etc.).

The NCATS-funded Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC) Common Metrics Initiative team is disseminating a series of brief webcasts from CTSA Program experts with topics ranging from foundational information to understand the field of informatics to how to get to interoperability.

Various biomedical informatics resources manage and store data differently, which creates the need for standardization. The Informatics Common Metric (in its second year) addresses the need to harmonize data across the CTSA Program. Harmonization will enhance our ability to collaborate on initiatives both within and outside the consortium, and supports the NCATS strategic objective: "Develop interoperable and integrative biomedical informatics resources to facilitate translational innovation in disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment."

The first five webcasts are an introduction to informatics, created to build foundational knowledge and to define key terms.

Emily Pfaff, PhD, MS, research assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill's Department of Medicine, and co-director of the NC TraCS Informatics and Data Science core, continues with webcast 6 discussing infrastructure and data quality in the context of CTSA informatics.

During the 11-minute webcast, Pfaff covers:

• What are some common examples of data quality issues in research data warehouses?
• What steps can hubs take to address these issues and improve data quality?
• How can institutional governance address data quality?

View the webcast, then catch up on the entire series at clic-ctsa.org.

Transcript and slides available at clic-ctsa.org/education/6-infrastructure-and-data-quality.