Discussion

 OnetoMap Analytics strives to elucidate the complexities of healthcare delivery by employing Big Data analytics and advanced machine learning algorithms, thereby providing stakeholders with actionable insights to enhance the quality and efficiency of patient care. The extensive data repository detailed herein encompasses comprehensive records of patient health statuses, socioeconomic demographic profiles, hospital structures, and physician practices. This holistic perspective facilitates the development of nuanced and impactful interventions, effectively addressing the multifaceted needs of healthcare systems and communities.

Strengths

The OnetoMap repository boasts several significant strengths, as discussed in more detail below. Overall, it provides comprehensive dataset descriptions, including detailed data dictionaries and variable categorizations, ensuring researchers have a clear understanding of the available data. Also, its robust linkage capabilities allow researchers to connect various datasets, enhancing the depth and breadth of their analyses. In addition, OnetoMap promotes interdisciplinary research and collaboration, evidenced by the publications resulting from partnerships with the Department of Surgery at the University of South Florida. And finally, OnetoMap facilitates easy data access while ensuring ethical compliance.

Enhancement of collaborative research efforts

Clinical data repositories have demonstrated how centralized data resources can support multi-institutional data sharing and high-performance computing, critical for large-scale collaborative research projects [14]. In this context, by embracing a collaborative ethos, the OnetoMap meta-data repository facilitates collaborations among different research teams. Providing a centralized, comprehensive source of diverse healthcare data enables researchers from various institutions and disciplines to access and analyze shared datasets. This collaborative access promotes interdisciplinary research, accelerates the discovery of novel insights, and fosters the development of innovative solutions to complex healthcare challenges. The repository's shared resources and data standardization also ensure consistency in research methodologies and findings, enhancing the overall impact and reliability of collaborative research efforts [15-17]. Since its inception at Loyola and the University of South Florida, OnetoMap has significantly promoted interdisciplinary research and collaboration, facilitating 112 publications in collaboration with the Department of Surgery [18].

Improvement in data linkage and integration

Of the databases available in the repo, 67% can be linked to another dataset using different sets of variables, such as geolocation and identifiers, depending on the characteristics of the datasets of interest. The integration of distinct datasets offers significant benefits in terms of research comprehensiveness since it allows researchers to analyze multiple aspects of health, socioeconomic status, and other factors simultaneously, providing a more comprehensive understanding of patient populations and healthcare systems, as well as combining data from various sources (e.g., EHR, surveys, genomic data), enabling researchers to draw connections across different domains, enhancing the depth and breadth of their analyses [19,20]. In addition, the dataset integration may improve longitudinal studies by enabling the continuous tracking of individuals across different healthcare settings and over extended periods, which is a crucial capability for studying disease progression, treatment outcomes, and long-term health trends. By integrating data longitudinally, researchers can also identify patterns and trends that emerge over time, facilitating more accurate and dynamic models of health and disease [21]. Furthermore, the linkage of databases uncovers new insights through data merging that isolated datasets cannot provide. Merging data from multiple sources increases the statistical power of analyses, allowing for the detection of subtle effects and interactions that might be missed in isolated datasets [22]. Moreover, integrated datasets can reveal new correlations and causal relationships that are not apparent when data is isolated [23]. Overall, the integration of diverse datasets not only enhances the comprehensiveness of research but also unlocks the potential for more detailed and longitudinal analyses, leading to novel insights and improved healthcare strategies.

Streamlining the ethical review process

Once the DUA is already established between individual datasets and the OnetoMap Analytics, the repository streamlines the ethical review process, leading to reductions in time and/or administrative burden for obtaining ethical approvals. Nevertheless, while this process accelerates research timelines, it still ensures compliance with ethical standards through a careful review process of the projects to be carried out prior to the execution of partnerships. 

It is important to note that while dataset descriptions and associated dictionaries are freely accessible, each dataset within the repository maintains its original documentation, license, and DUA. Consequently, the datasets themselves are not openly available without adhering to the specific terms set forth by their respective agreements.

Limitations

Given the descriptive nature of this paper and our stated ambition of enhancing research by lowering barriers to data access, we have no information suggesting that establishing OnetoMap has increased research interest, grants, publications, or abstracts to date. 

The current count and coverage of datasets may be limited, potentially restricting the scope of available research data. Also, maintaining and updating the repository poses challenges, requiring continuous effort and resources to ensure data accuracy and relevance. Additionally, ethical and legal considerations related to data sharing and use must be meticulously managed to prevent misuse. Finally, there is also a need for user training and support to ensure that researchers can effectively utilize the repository, as navigating and integrating complex datasets can be challenging without adequate guidance.

Future directions

We have focused on developing and maintaining a high-quality meta-data repository until now. Moving forward, we plan to implement several strategies to ensure the datasets remain current and valuable for researchers.

One of our primary goals is to enable automatic annual updates of existing datasets, which will ensure the available datasets remain up-to-date and relevant to the research community. Additionally, we plan to explore the possibility of automatic dataset linkage, where different datasets can be linked together when allowed to provide a more comprehensive picture of the research topic.

Another area of focus will be to provide monthly updates of published papers by our group and other groups using the datasets on the OnetoMap meta-data repository. The goal is to keep the research community informed about new developments and insights that emerge from the analysis performed using the available datasets.

In addition, to facilitate communication and collaboration among potential users of the OnetoMap meta-data repository and its datasets, we plan to create a chat space for users or subscribers. This space will allow users to exchange ideas, ask questions, and share insights.

Finally, we plan to develop small code applets for easy data analysis. These applets will be designed to simplify the data analysis process, making it more accessible to researchers who may not have extensive programming experience.

In summary, our future directions involve a commitment to ensuring that our OnetoMap meta-data repository remains current, functional, and accessible to the research community. These efforts will help to facilitate new discoveries and insights, ultimately leading to advancements in our understanding of healthcare outcomes.