Author Archives: Dina

NIH All of Us Researcher Workbench – Data Browser

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The NIH All of Us Research Program is “part of an effort to advance individualized health care by enrolling one million or more participants to contribute their health data over many years”.

All of Us data is derived from various sources, including surveys, shared electronic health records, and much more. This collected data is housed in the All of Us Research Hub, which uses a tiered-data access model that includes a Public Tier dataset that “displays high-level summaries of the data available for research. Through the Data Browser, one can explore anonymized, aggregated participant data and summary statistics.”

As Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is listed as registered Institution with a Data Use and Registration Agreement (DURA) in place, MSK researchers can proceed to register for an account if they wish to gain access the curated datasets beyond the Public Tier dataset. 
Note: Authorized users of the All of Us data are expected to conduct research that follows and conforms to the All of Us Research Program data use policies.

The interactive, public Data Browser is a great place to learn about the type and quantity of data that All of Us collects so that interested researchers can start thinking about potential research questions that this data could help answer. Here’s a glimpse at what it looks like – from https://databrowser.researchallofus.org:

The Data Browser can be searched using keywords across all data types, or users can choose to click on the browsable tiles to explore a particular data type or source. 

From: https://databrowser.researchallofus.org/survey/social-determinants-of-health

For example, the Social Determinants of Health tile will lead users to more specific information, including a view of the survey questions themselves, each presented with a link to “See Answers” that leads to a breakdown of the aggregated participant answers.

To learn more about the NIH All of Us Researcher Workbench and to get an idea of how other researchers are already using this data, please check out the following resources:

…or Ask Us at the MSK Library!

25 Years of MedlinePlus

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The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM)’s consumer health information online resource, MedlinePlus, just turned 25 years old! For a historical look back – see:

25 Years of Consumer Health Information: MedlinePlus Celebrates Its Silver Anniversary – NLM Musings from the Mezzanine (nih.gov)

Soon after NLM made the PubMed database (a free index to the biomedical and life sciences literature aimed primarily at health care professionals and researchers) available in 1996, NLM realized that the need for accessible and authoritative health information extended beyond health professionals to the general public.

And so MedlinePlus.gov came online starting in Fall 1998 and has continued to grow and evolve ever since.

Some noteworthy MdlinePlus enhancements over the years have been the inclusion of quality health information in Spanish, information about herbs and supplements, drug information summaries, medical test summaries, information about genes and genetics conditions, healthy recipes, and over 1000 health topics.

Most recently, in 2020, another NLM resource, Genetics Home Reference (GHR), was incorporated into MedlinePlus in the form of the MedlinePlus Genetics module that includes easy-to-understand “Help Me Understand Genetics” pages intended for patients.

Also worthy of highlighting have been NLM’s efforts to expand the reach of this valuable consumer health information by creating MedlinePlus Connect, “a free service that links electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, and other health IT systems to relevant, authoritative, and up-to-date health information from NLM’s MedlinePlus health information resource and other NIH websites.” To understand how MedlinePlus Connect works, click here. The National Cancer Institute has also collaborated “to expand the scope of content in MedlinePlus Connect”.

Learn more:

Burgess S, Dennis S, Lanka S, Miller N, Potvin J. MedlinePlus Connect: Linking Health IT Systems to Consumer Health Information. IT Prof. 2012 May;14(3):22-28. doi: 10.1109/mitp.2012.19. PMID: 23066351; PMCID: PMC3469315.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!

Publication Integrity Checking – Is it necessary?

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A topic being discussed with increasing regularity in the scientific literature is whether scholarly authors need to start personally assessing the publication integrity of the papers that they cite in their research, similarly to how they currently take steps to assess the risk of bias of individual studies being considered for inclusion in their research syntheses.

A team from New Zealand and the United Kingdom have been researching this issue for a while now, with their latest commentary piece appearing in the August 2024 issue of Nature:

  • Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA, Byrne JA, Wilmshurst P, Bolland MJ. Stop just paying lip service on publication integrity. Nature. 2024 Aug;632(8023):26-28. doi: 10.1038/d41586-024-02449-8. PMID: 39075213.
  • Bolland, M. J., Avenell, A., & Grey, A. (2024). Publication integrity: what is it, why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better? Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03036758.2024.2325004
  • Avenell, A., Bolland, M. J., Gamble, G. D., & Grey, A. (2022). A randomized trial alerting authors, with or without coauthors or editors, that research they cited in systematic reviews and guidelines has been retracted. Accountability in Research, 31(1), 14–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2082290
  • Bolland MJ, Grey A, Avenell A, Klein AA. Correcting the scientific record – A broken system? Account Res. 2021 Jul;28(5):265-279. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2020.1852938. Epub 2020 Dec 8. PMID: 33205666.

This group clearly thinks publication integrity checking is necessary, even introducing “The ‘REAPPRAISED’ checklist for evaluation of publication integrity” in an earlier Nature comment, see:

  • Grey A, Bolland MJ, Avenell A, Klein AA, Gunsalus CK. Check for publication integrity before misconduct. Nature. 2020 Jan;577(7789):167-169. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-03959-6. PMID: 31911697.

    Tip: A PDF version of THE ‘REAPPRAISED’ CHECKLIST FOR EVALUATION OF PUBLICATION INTEGRITY is available for download.

As there is of yet no consensus on which checklist tool is best, other groups have made similar attempts to create a research publication integrity assessment tool, for example:

See details of their RIA tool in:

  •  Figure 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Hierarchical work flow and decision tree of the Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) tool.
  • Table 1 – PMC (nih.gov) – Critical and important criteria for a Research Integrity Assessment (RIA) of RCTs investigating IMPs for evidence syntheses.

Questions? Be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library!