July 14, 2026
The OHDSI Workgroup Spotlight series continued July 14 when Natural Language Processing (NLP) workgroup leads Hua Xu and Vipina Keloth joined to discuss the recent accomplishments, current research focuses and upcoming network studies taking place within the NLP workgroup. They also answered community questions. If you are interested in joining the NLP WG (or any other), please let us know!
Community Updates
• Congratulations to the team of Jisu Park, Ju Hwan Kim, Yoon Seob Kim, Gyeongmin Lim, Hong Ji Song, Sang Youl Rhee, Seonghoon Hwang, Daeun Cho, Minyoung Kim, Bo-Yeon Kim, Chang Won Jeong, Dae-Yeon Kim, Hang A Park, Min-Ho Kim, Seong Hwan Kim, Won-Woo Seo, Woo Jin Kim, Young Sung Suh, Rae Woong Park, and Ju-Young Shin on the recent publication of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists for Weight Loss and Risk of Major Safety Outcomes: A Multicentre Cohort Study in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.
• Congratulations to the team of Pierluigi Reali, Valentina Tibollo, Gaia Riboni, Pierluigi Plebani, Letizia Tanca, and Maria G Signorini on the recent publication of An OMOP Common Data Model pipeline for electrocardiography dataset integration by standardizing signal metadata and heart rate variability features in Frontiers in Bioinformatics.
• Congratulations to the team of Manuel Rueda, Juan Manuel Ramírez-Anguita, Victoria López-Sánchez, Sergi Aguiló-Castillo, Maria Eugenia Gas López, Alberto Labarga, Miguel-Ángel Mayer, Javier Ripoll Esteve, and Ivo G. Gut on the recent publication of Enhancing semantic interoperability in precision medicine: converting OMOP CDM to Beacon v2 in the Spanish IMPaCT-Data project in BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making.
• Congratulations to the team of Hanjae Kim, Minseong Kim, Seonji Kim, and Seng Chan You on the recent publication of From study design to executable code: automating target trial emulation with large language models in JAMIA Open.
• Jenna Reps recently posted a call for developers with knowledge or interest in R or shiny or web development/design and UI and want to help out with HADES development in a new workgroup. If you are interested, please respond to the forum post.
• The annual “Welcome OHDSI Newcomers” community call will be held July 28.If you are relatively new to the community or hope to have a bigger role, this is a great opportunity to introduce yourself. Please tell us who you are and where you work, what are your research interests, how you hope to help the community, and how OHDSI can help your own research journey. For scheduling purposes, please note your interest in taking part in this brief survey.
• 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.
• Jiwon Um, a PhD student at Yonsei University in Korea, introduced a brief survey focusing on OHDSI in the Era of Medical AI. Medical AI is reshaping how observational research evidence is generated and used. The OHDSI community has spent more than a decade building infrastructure — OMOP CDM, standardized vocabularies, federated networks, open-source methodology — that may have a distinctive role in this transition. This survey asks how you, as a member of the community, see that role and the tensions surrounding it.
• The latest edition of The Journey Newsletter is now available, and it includes all the LLM-focused presentations from last month. This issue is also packed with essential updates, including our latest June publications and community spotlights on Melanie Philofsky and Sulev Reisberg. We also looked ahead to the first LATAM Symposium and announced the dates for the APAC Symposium.
• A new 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 first OHDSI Latin America Symposium will be held July 30-31 in Salvador, Brazil. The event will include multiple workshops, including sessions focused on Introduction to OMOP, Cohort building, ETL for OMOP, and Scientific collaboration: opportunities for network studies in Latin America.
• 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.
• The 2026 OHDSI APAC Symposium 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. Registration has not opened yet, but please check the event homepage for details on the agenda and registration.
• 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 — ICD 10 to SNOMED-CT and OMOP Mapping: Performance, Limitations, and Clinical Implications of Automated Athena Mappings (Kirsten Colpaert)
Tuesday — Large Language Model–Based Classification of ICD-10-CM to SNOMED Mappings for Improved Semantic Fidelity in OHDSI (Dymtro Dymshyts)
Wednesday — INFRA: InfectionRadar – A Swiss nationally funded demonstrator aligning regional and OHDSI/OMOP framework through dual modelling and OHDSI tooling (Karen Triep)
Thursday — Performance Evaluation of an AI-Based Vocabulary Mapping Platform for the OMOP Common Data Model (Miguel Ferreira)
Friday — Semantic Drift in Real‑World Data: A Framework for Detecting and Managing Concept Evolution in OMOP‑CDM (Yogesh Kumar Gupta)
Slides
Video Presentations
NLP Workgroup Spotlight
