CDISC Blog

Dr. Frank Rockhold (GSK) opened the conference by talking about his experience of building an understanding of the world of standards. He talked about the importance of communicating a clear, unambiguous message: you need standards to improve research. He acknowledged that this was at times quite tricky but above all, he emphasised that standards do matter.

Dr. Christopher Chute reinforced this message by discussing the issues related to healthcare information and the problems of translating rambling clinical information into structured information for research. He drew on some interesting research conducted in the 16th Century by Henry VIII who, in order to avoid death by some horrendous disease, asked for records to be kept of how people were dying across England! This information was kept as tabulations on paper. Perhaps Henry VIII would have approved of CDISC's SDTM? Dr Chute continued by talking about the need for interoperability and to ensure that healthcare and research can connect.

Dr. Charles Jaffe, then introduced the importance of collaboration between standards development organisations and highlighted the strength of the collaboration between HL7 and CDISC. Those of you who have heard Dr. Jaffe talk in the past will know that he can always be relied upon to supply the audience with some excellent quotes, perhaps today's highlight: "If you can't be a good example then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning!"

The session ended with John Speakman echoing the power of collaboration, by talking about the work that CDISC and NCI have undertaken through the Enterprise Vocabulary Service and now the new collaboration on CDISC SHARE.

This was an excellent opening session and is the start of a very busy and exciting conference.

AJ de Montjoie