Course Registries, databases and other electronic data sources in clinical research

The course C214/13 Registries, databases and other electronic data sources in clinical research is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, spring 2025.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Requirements for participation: During the course, you are expected to work with designing your own clinical epidemiological research project using data from registries or other secondary data sources. This will NOT involve direct work with your own registry data. If you do not have your own project, one example project will be provided.  You need to bring your own computer for the course. There will be mandatory preparations/assignments before the first course day and between the course days.

Aim: To facilitate the participants use of secondary data sources in clinical research.

Learning outcomes: After completion of this course, participants are expected to:

• List the Danish registries and other secondary data sources most often utilized in clinical research
• Identify relevant Danish registries and other secondary data sources based on the research question
• Describe the data structure as well as some specific pitfalls of working with Danish registries and other secondary data sources
• Compare the content of different Danish registers and other secondary data sources and evaluate their usefulness for clinical epidemiological research questions
• Assess the strength and weaknesses of the use of Danish registries and other secondary data sources in clinical epidemiology
• Design and execute a validation study of some of the content of a Danish Register or another secondary data source.
• Design a clinical epidemiological study using Danish registers and/or other secondary data sources

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 67.5 hours

Content: Secondary data sources, Danish medical databases, selection of data sources, applying for data, methods for validation studies, design of validation studies, designing and visualizing the design of studies based on secondary data, biases in epidemiological studies using secondary data, combining secondary data sources with other types of data.

Instructors: Signe Sørup, Vera Ehrenstein, Mette Nørgaard, Christian Fynbo Christiansen, Anne Sofie Dam Laursen, Mette Kielsholm Thomsen

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus (other)

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 11 March 2025 09:00 - 15:00
• 18 March 2025 09:00 - 15:00
• 08 April 2025 09:00 - 15:00