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Feasibility First — Is My Question Feasible?

A 30-minute exemplar for researchers new to OMOP/OHDSI. It takes the position of a researcher who has a real question but does not yet know who to contact, what to ask, or whether the data can answer it, and walks from zero to a defensible go/no-go decision using the public ATLAS demo.

About the running example

The running example is the ALS use case used across this program: motor neuron disease, riluzole, and the ALSFRS-R. The workflow is disease-agnostic; the steps, checks, and tools are the same for any condition. The original version of this module, built around a pregnancy question for the JHU OHDSI MCH Fellowship, is kept in the maternal and child health edition of the curriculum.

Start the walkthrough Jump to the go/no-go checklist Instructor kit & slides

Objectives

By the end of this module you will be able to:

  1. Turn a loose research idea into a feasibility-testable specification (a cohort you could build).
  2. Identify who owns your institution's OMOP instance and ask the right questions.
  3. Read a standardized vocabulary well enough to tell whether your concepts exist and are mapped.
  4. Use ATLAS to test concept presence and cohort counts, and read what those counts do and do not prove.
  5. Decide whether the question is feasible here, feasible via the network, or needs reframing, before you write a protocol.

Why this module sits at the front

The daily curriculum (Days 1–6) teaches you to build. This module teaches you to check first. Feasibility assessment is cheap; running a study on the wrong data is expensive. The aim is to learn that a question cannot be answered before a protocol is written, not after.

The ALSFRS-R makes the lesson concrete. The scale has LOINC codes, so a vocabulary search finds it at every site. At many sites the scores are written in clinic notes and never reach a structured table, so a count of records finds few or none. A cohort that requires a structured ALSFRS-R score can collapse to nothing while every concept in it exists.

The running example

Among people with motor neuron disease who start riluzole, what do the data show about their ALS Functional Rating Scale - Revised (ALSFRS-R) scores over the following year?

Swap in your own question wherever you like. The steps do not change.

The 30-minute path

Time Segment Page
0–4 min Framing and the feasibility mindset this page
4–9 min Sharpen the question into cohort logic Sharpen the question
9–14 min Who to contact and what to ask Find your data steward
14–18 min Vocabulary and CDM essentials Vocabulary & CDM primer
18–26 min Live ATLAS demo: test feasibility ATLAS feasibility walkthrough
26–29 min When one site is not enough: the network Network feasibility
29–30 min Your go/no-go decision Feasibility checklist

Facilitators should also read the Facilitator notes and the checks-to-tools appendix.

How this connects to the rest of the curriculum

Slides and materials

File Description
Instructor Deck with Notes Headline-only slides with the presenter script in the speaker notes
Slide-by-slide script The same script as a page
Kahoot Quiz (CSV) Quiz on the feasibility workflow
Kit README How to build the demo cohort in ATLAS before class