Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 1, 2026

Generation and Multi-phenotypic High-content Screening of Coxiella burnetii Transposon Mutants
Published on: May 13, 2015
CohortDiagnostics: Phenotype evaluation across a network of observational data sources using population-level
Gowtham A Rao1,2, Azza Shoaibi1,2, Rupa Makadia1,2
1Observational Health Data Analytics, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, Titusville, NJ, United States of America.
Objective:
This paper introduces a novel framework for evaluating phenotype algorithms (PAs) using the open-source tool, Cohort Diagnostics.
Materials And Methods:
The method is based on several diagnostic criteria to evaluate a patient cohort returned by a PA. Diagnostics include estimates of incidence rate, index date entry code breakdown, and prevalence of all observed clinical events prior to, on, and after index date. We test our framework by evaluating one PA for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and two PAs for Alzheimer's disease (AD) across 10 different observational data sources.
Results:
By utilizing CohortDiagnostics, we found that the population-level characteristics of individuals in the cohort of SLE closely matched the disease's anticipated clinical profile. Specifically, the incidence rate of SLE was consistently higher in occurrence among females. Moreover, expected clinical events like laboratory tests, treatments, and repeated diagnoses were also observed. For AD, although one PA identified considerably fewer patients, absence of notable differences in clinical characteristics between the two cohorts suggested similar specificity.
Discussion:
We provide a practical and data-driven approach to evaluate PAs, using two clinical diseases as examples, across a network of OMOP data sources. Cohort Diagnostics can ensure the subjects identified by a specific PA align with those intended for inclusion in a research study.
Conclusion:
Diagnostics based on large-scale population-level characterization can offer insights into the misclassification errors of PAs.
Related Concept Videos
Ordinal Level of Measurement
Data measured using an ordinal scale are similar to nominal scale data, but there is one major difference. The ordinal scale data can be ordered. An example of ordinal scale data is a list of the top five national parks...
How Data are Classified: Categorical Data
Data are classified based on whether they are measurable or not. Categorical data cannot be measured; instead, it can be divided into categories. For example, if Y denotes a person's party affiliation, some examples of Y include...
Data Collection by Observations
An astronomer viewing the motion and brightness of stars in the sky and recording the data is an example of observational data collection. A botanist recording...
Analysis of Population Pharmacokinetic Data
Statistical Methods for Analyzing Epidemiological Data
Methods to Assess Microbial Populations

