Maturing technical assets and standards, deepening global community engagement and launching or advancing collaborative initiatives were highlighted among the top accomplishments within OHDSI over the last 12 months. Patrick Ryan led the Dec. 9 community call to reflect on progress through 2025, including the successes, challenges and focuses moving forward. This session included:

• a look at events around the world, including new events in Africa, Sweden and Canada
• a LLM-aided synopsis of 700+ notes shared by the community at the global symposium highlighting current work and future goals
• results from a workgroup survey noting both successes and future endeavors
• a Top 10 list of OHDSI accomplishments in 2025

The video presentation, along with accompanying slides, is available below.

The 12th annual OHDSI Global Symposium will return to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Brunswick, N.J., Oct. 20-22, 2026. Currently, the OHDSI steering group is seeking proposals for both plenaries and tutorials. The deadline for both is January 30, 2026.

Symposium plenaries provide opportunities to share innovative, community-developed content to empower researchers to generate reliable real-world evidence. The community is currently seeking proposals for our #OHDSI2026 plenaries. These sessions will be 60 minutes in duration and must touch on at least two of following pillars of our community: open community data standards, methodological research, open-source development, and clinical applications. Plenary sessions must also involve three or more on-stage participants across at least two organizations. Sessions may include a combination of keynote talks, panel discussions, interactive activities, and more.

Tutorial sessions aim to deliver educational content, led by community members who wish to train our global collaborators on scientific, technical, and other skills that can support advancing OHDSI’s mission and the effective use of real-world data and the generation and dissemination of reliable real-world evidence. Tutorial sessions are 4 hours in duration. Sessions may include a combination of talks, interactive activities, and more. More details on both the plenary and tutorial proposals can be found on the event homepage.

For those collaborators interested in joining the Europe Symposium Collaborator Showcase (April 20, Rotterdam), submissions for both posters and software demonstration will be accepted through Feb. 6. Learn more about the submission process. 

Dr. Swetha Kiranmayi Jakkuva is a healthcare professional with over 14 years of experience spanning clinical practice, research, and healthcare data management. Currently, she leads Research Enabling Services at Global Value Web (GVW), focusing on Real-World Data (RWD), Real-World Evidence (RWE), observational research, data standardization initiatives, and driving healthcare digital journeys with hospitals. Since the inception of the OHDSI India Chapter, Dr. Swetha has been dedicatedly working to grow and strengthen the community, fostering collaborations across hospitals, academic institutions, and industry partners. Under her leadership, the chapter has grown into a vibrant community promoting OMOP adoption, developing patient registries, and advancing research-ready healthcare data in India.

She began her career in dentistry, providing direct patient care, and later transitioned into healthcare analytics. Dr. Swetha has worked with ICON Clinical Research in Clinical Data Management (CDM) and Athena Health in US healthcare solutions, gaining valuable experience in clinical research and healthcare analytics. To strengthen her analytical expertise, she completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Data Science and Business Analytics from the University of Texas at Austin, equipping her to bridge clinical knowledge with data-driven insights.

She is committed to improving healthcare, using her clinical and data expertise to enhance patient care and outcomes in India and beyond. She discusses her career journey, how OHDSI aligns with her professional goals, the growth of OHDSI in India, and more in the latest collaborator spotlight.

The Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at Columbia University remains a global leader in health data science and clinical information systems. Based at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, DBMI serves as both a premier academic hub and a strategic partner to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Today, the department is driving the field’s most impactful work in healthcare AI, developing sophisticated machine learning and natural language processing tools that translate complex electronic health record data into actionable clinical insights. By bridging the gap between atomic-level data and global populations, DBMI continues to define the future of biomedical research and patient care.

As the OHDSI coordinating center, DBMI provides the central infrastructure and strategic leadership necessary to advance our global mission. The department leads the Steering Workgroup to guide the generation of reproducible evidence and maintains the platforms that connect collaborators with research opportunities. DBMI ensures the community’s output remains a public good by distributing standardized vocabularies, supporting open-source software, and maintaining open access to study designs and results. By empowering current workgroup and regional leaders while recruiting new contributors, Columbia fosters the inclusive, highly collaborative environment required for large-scale evidence generation.

As the OHDSI network continues its unprecedented growth, the scale of our coordination must match our scientific ambition. To ensure the community reaches its full potential and continues to provide the open-access tools the world relies on, sustained financial support for Columbia’s coordinating operations is essential. This investment secures the personnel and technical frameworks needed to manage global data standards and host large-scale network studies. By supporting the coordinating center as a member of the advisory board or a sponsor, partners enable DBMI to provide the foundational stability required to transform observational research and improve health outcomes worldwide.