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NFDI4Health Workshops at the DGEpi 2023
This year, the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi) met in the central lecture hall at the Hubland Campus in Würzburg from 26 to 28 September 2023. The first face-to-face meeting after the pandemic attracted about 500 visitors to debate developments related to the theme "Epidemiology in Transition - Innovations and Challenges”. Current obstacles in the integration of different types of data and the design of new evaluation concepts and study designs were discussed. 15 NFDI4Health members attended the conference and presented its strategy for a national research data infrastructure in health research as well as its first services for a FAIR research data management.
Focusing on the principles of excellent research data management and the key objectives of the consortium, colleagues from NFDI4Health introduced tools for use in clinical and medical research data areas and provided insights to the NFDI4Health services DataSHIELD and Personal Health Train:
- The workshop on DataSHIELD gave an opportunity to learn about the open-source software and its capabilities for federated analysis of personal health data. The participants were invited to perform an initial data analysis on their own.
- In the PADME - Personal Health Train workshop, the audience was introduced to a second approach to analyze research data in a decentralized manner. The subsequent discussion highlighted challenges related to data sharing, such as privacy and data sovereignty issues.
- In our Love your data workshop, the German Central Health Study Hub was presented and the participants were given the opportunity to search for study data and learn about the FAIR (Findable - Accessible - Interoperable - Reusable) principles.
- Managing research data well was the title of our fourth workshop, which focused on the status quo, innovative approaches, and future challenges in the analysis of epidemiological research data. The workshop concluded with a panel discussion by our NFDI4Health consortium members on future aspects of FAIR research data management in Germany and neighboring European countries.
We thank our community for their participation and lively discussions and look forward to DGEpi 2024 in Dresden!
