Aug. 18, 2026
Looking to get more involved in the OHDSI community? Our Workgroup Spotlight series returned Aug. 18, and featured leads from both the Eyecare & Vision Research and Rehabilitation workgroups. We were thrilled to hear from Cindy Cai, Michelle Hribar and Kerry Ashby from the Eye Care WG, as well as Esther Janssen and Ruud Salles from the Rehabilitation WG, to hear about their respective missions, latest research, and how you can collaborate on their upcoming projects.
If you are interested in joining either —or any other — workgroup, please fill out this brief form.
Community Updates
• Congratulations to the team of Meet Popatbhai Kachhadia, Piyush Puri, Usmaan Topiwala, Juber D Shaikh, Gurnoor Gill, Shailesh Gupta, Michelle Byrus, and Harshal A Sanghvi on the recent publication of Retinal Artery Occlusion and Incident Dementia in the All of Us Research Program: Detection Bias Calibration with Prespecified Negative-Control Outcomes in the Journal of Clinical Medicine Research.
• Congratulations to the team of Seyedmostafa Sheikhalishahi, Mathias Kaspar, Johanna Schwinn, Matthaeus Morhart, Philipp Simon, and Ludwig Christian Hinske on the recent publication of Cross-Silo Federated Learning for Predicting Successful Mechanical Ventilation Weaning Across 5 Intensive Care Unit Databases: Retrospective Database Analysis in JMIR Medical Informatics.
• The OHDSI Titan Awards recognize those who have gone above and beyond to foster community engagement, lead research and development efforts, and make significant contributions towards OHDSI’s mission. Individuals, teams or collaborating institutions can be nominated for an award, and you can make as many nominations as you would like. Each nomination must include the nominee’s name, organization, email and a short paragraph describing why the collaborator(s) should be nominated for one of seven Titan Awards. Nominations will be accepted until 8pm ET Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. The 2026 Titan Awards Committee will be responsible for selecting the award winners. NOMINATE HERE
• The Common Data Model working group has been planning CDM v5.5 over the last 18 months and there is now a development version to share. Please take a look, review, and test in your environment if you are able. This version will be released alongside the August 2026 vocabulary and will support community needs and continued vocabulary updates.
• Registration is open for the 4-day OMOP School in Uppsala, Sweden on Oct. 13-16. There are fewer than 10 spaces remaining, so don’t wait until the final moment to register.
• The CDM Survey Subgroup has shared a Best Practices for Mapping Standardized Assessment Instrument Data to the OMOP Common Data Model protocol. Learn more via the full proposal or this slidedeck. Please review and comment by Aug. 27.
• Maryia (aka Masha) Khitrun is the Technical Lead of the OHDSI Vocabulary team at Odysseus Data Services (an EPAM company), based in Vilnius, Lithuania. A medical doctor by training, she brings hands-on clinical experience to her work in health informatics. Masha started her career in OHDSI as a junior data analyst performing concept mappings and has grown into her expertise in vocabulary development and support, step by step. In the latest edition of the Collaborator Spotlight, Masha discusses her career journey, the challenges and importance of maintaining standardized vocabularies, new processes to enhance community contribution, and plenty more.
• Peter Hoffmann provided a preview of the ATLAS 3 demo site during the July 7 community call. The ATLAS workgroup is looking for feedback about the new site. The demo is available here (Db Authenticaton enabled: use ohdsi/ohdsi, and anonymous access will be enabled in a future update). Discussions will be held here. Thank you for collaborating on this critical open-source tool for our community.
• A call for papers is open for a Journal of Biomedical Informatics special issue focusing on agentic AI for generating trustworthy Real-World Evidence (RWE). The issue seeks contributions on multi-agent collaboration and coordinated autonomy across the RWE lifecycle—such as data harmonization and causal analysis—while excluding single-task AI agents. Submissions are accepted from June 15 through November 15, 2026, with publication slated for September 2027.
• The FALCON (Federated Alliance for Large-scale Cancer Observational Network) Research Network is dedicated to advancing real-world oncology evidence through federated health analyses. The network is hosting its 2026 Symposium and Bladder Cancer Studyathon from Sep. 28-Oct. 1 at Dunden in Antwerp, Belgium. This intensive four-day event kicks off with a general symposium followed by a three-day collaborative working session for researchers, clinicians, and data scientists to generate high-quality clinical evidence on the OMOP CDM.
• Take your OMOP CDM from implementation to impact with The OMOP Practitioner, an intensive three-day expert training hosted Sept. 7-9 by Erasmus MC in Rotterdam. Registration is now OPEN. This hands-on program moves beyond the basics, offering a maximum of 30 participants deep-dive experience with the Data Quality Dashboard, ATLAS, and real-world study execution.
Upcoming Events
• The UK Symposium will be held September 18 at the University of Nottingham, preceded by an OMOP Training Day on September 17.
• Registration is open for the 2026 OHDSI Global Symposium, held Oct. 20–22 at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick, N.J. You can also read more about our 12 new tutorial offerings and workgroup activities which will take place during the event.
• Registration is open for the 2026 OHDSI APAC Symposium, which will take place Nov. 13-15 at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. This will be a 3-day event, kicking off with the main conference and then including tutorials and a datathon during the weekend. Please check the event homepage for details on the agenda and collaborator showcase; the submission deadline for the showcase is August 23 at 10 pm ET.
• The third annual OHDSI India Symposium has been scheduled for December 11th in Chennai. More details and registration information will be shared with the community as they become available.
Social Showcase
• Research from the 2026 Europe Symposium Collaborator Showcase is being shared daily on OHDSI’s LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Instagram and Bluesky social channels as part of the #OHDSISocialShowcase. Below are posters (with study leads) that are featured this week:
Monday — Hospital 12 de Octubre’s Experience in Real-World Evidence Generation (Paula Rubio Mayo)
Tuesday — Detecting implausible measurement values in observational data using machine-learning based outlier detection methods (Anthony Sena)
Wednesday — Lessons Learned from Implementing OMOP ETLs Across EHR and Registry-Based Data Sources (Renata Silva)
Thursday — AI-Assisted Precision and Granularity Assessment of In-Source Japanese Diagnosis Mappings (Tetiana Orlova)
Friday — Achievements, challenges, and future directions of the EXTERNAL_EXPOSURE table as an OMOP extension for GIS research (Polina Talapova)
Slides
Eye Care & Vision Research | Community Updates
Video Presentations
Spotlight: Eye Care and Vision Research
Spotlight: Rehabilitation