What are Common Data Elements?

Brief Description

Goals of using Common Data Elements in Brain-CODE

• One of the Ontario Brain Institute's (OBI) key goals is to enable researchers to collaborate across disciplines, across institutions and across diseases.

• An efficient comparison of data (analysis) can only be done when data are in the same format. To properly analyze the vast array of clinical, neuroimaging, and molecular data that will be stored in Brain-CODE, it has to be standardized.

Purpose of Common Data Elements

• Common Data Elements (CDEs) help define and format the different types of variables that researchers analyze.

• They allow for consistency in data collection across studies, improve quality of the data collected, and increase opportunities for sharing and cross-study analysis.

• CDEs also optimize researchers’ ability to analyze large pools of data as well as to facilitate linking with external databases.

Brain-CODE’s Common Data Elements

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