Staburo @ CDISC 2021 Europe Interchange 

Data standards are of vital importance to transparent, high quality, efficient analysis and decision-making in all stages of clinical (and preclinical) research. Staburo was represented at the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) 2021 Europe Interchange virtual conference, which took place from 28-30 April, to keep track of the latest developments in the field. Among the major themes of the conference were the integration of the data standards environment (e.g. CDISC, HL7 FHIR, OMOP Common Data Model), the implementation of the “biomedical concepts” approach in CDISC, and automated metadata processing and utilisation (e.g. via metadata repositories such as the CDISC Library). Besides the discussion of new technical developments, the presentations included case studies, showcasing of educational material and software tools, and regulatory perspectives. The challenges posed by the Covid19 pandemic were given special attention, including a presentation on the current status of vaccine development by the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Peter Marks.