Course Electronic Health Records in Clinical, Epidemiological, and Biomedical Research

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ECTS: 1.2

Course leader: Lars Henning Pedersen

Language: English

Graduate school: Faculty of Health

Graduate program: ClinFO

Course fee: 1,440.00 DKK

Status: Course is open for application

Semester: Fall 2026

Application deadline: 26/10/2026

Cancellation deadline: 09/11/2026

Course type: Classroom teaching

Start date: 23/11/2026

Administrator: Johanne Gregor Højgaard

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Preparation prior to course start

Please expect preparation work ~4 hours.

The course C343 Electronic Health Records in Clinical, Epidemiological, and Biomedical Research, is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2026.

Criteria for participation

Applicants must hold a university degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, public health, biostatistics or a related field. The course is aimed at PhD students and research-year medical students.

Requirements for participation

Participants are expected to have basic knowledge of epidemiology and study design.

Aim

The course provides a comprehensive and methodologically grounded introduction to the use of electronic health records (EHR) in clinical, epidemiological, and biomedical research. Emphasis is placed on data structure, data validity, legal and ethical frameworks, and key methodological challenges, supported by examples from Danish healthcare registries and clinical systems.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge: Describe EHR structure and heterogeneity; understand legal and ethical frameworks; identify sources of bias.
Skills: Design EHR-based studies; assess data quality and coding; address confounding, selection bias, and missing data; apply basic principles of data extraction including NLP.
Competencies: Critically appraise EHR-based research; translate findings into clinically relevant insights; develop a research protocol using EHR data.

Workload

The full workload of the course is expected to be 12 hours (Preparation ~4 hours; course participation 8 hours).

Content

Introduction to EHR systems; legal and ethical frameworks (GDPR, Danish Legislation, Declaration of Helsinki); data structure and coding practices; study designs; bias and data limitations; data access and management; extraction of structured and unstructured data (including using language models); clinical applications of EHR data.

Instructors

Lars Henning Pedersen (Course Leader), Line Kolding, Mette Thunbo.

Venue

Aarhus University, Aarhus

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 institutions within the open market agreement

Course dates:

  • 23 November 2026 09:00 - 16:00