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For our next talk, in the Digital Phenotyping seminar series, we will hear from Professor Ben Goldacre, Director, Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science; Bennett Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, NDPCHS, University of Oxford on Wednesday 11 February, 2:00pm – 3:00pm, at the Big Data Institute (BDI).
Title: Extracting features from electronic health records with shared open tools: ehrQL and OpenSAFELY
Date: Wednesday 11 February 2026
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Venue: BDI/OxPop, Seminar Room 0; followed by refreshments in the atrium
Abstract:
OpenSAFELY is a set of tools for working with raw electronic health records data. The platform’s innovative methods for privacy and transparency have earned trust from key stakeholders, and successfully delivered researchers access to an unprecedented scale of data: the full structured and linked NHS GP EHR records of the whole population of England. OpenSAFELY has a large productive user-base from over 20 organisations. NHS England will be expanding the service this year to permit non-COVID uses of the platform; the tools are also being deployed in other nations on top of their local electronic health records, as a federated analytics network. You can read more about the platform online: docs.opensafely.org
OpenSAFELY users work with a wide range of standardised tools for efficient data management, specifically built to meet the needs of analysts working with EHR data, facilitating open and reproducible analytics. This seminar will present those tools, which can be used inside existing OpenSAFELY installations, or as standalone services. There will be live coding demonstrations; users can also read the documentation – or complete the online tutorials with live interactive coding environments in the browser – on the links below.
* ehrQL or “Electronic Health Records Query Language” is the core EHR data management tool, allowing portable, legible, composable, standardised and shared code for feature extraction in clinical records.
docs.opensafely.org/ehrql
docs.opensafely.org/ehrql/tutorial
www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2023/09/why-ehrql
* OpenCodeLists allows users to produce, document and share codelists in SNOMED-CT, ICD10 and other terminologies.
www.opencodelists.org
www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/opencodelists/blog
* OpenCodeCounts allows any interested user to explore the frequency of SNOMED-CT code usage in English primary care records, through a freely accessible online browser, to infer feasibility and assist in building codelists.
www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2025/10/introducing-opencodecounts
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Hybrid Option:
Please note that these meetings are closed meetings and only open to members of the University of Oxford. Please respect our speakers and do not share the link with anyone outside of the University. The purpose of these seminars is to foster more communication among employees throughout the University, so we strongly advise in-person attendance whenever feasible.
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Microsoft Teams meeting
teams.microsoft.com/meet/35058292636481?p=6Dc9r5XHVIw1mrRSDJ
Meeting ID:
350 582 926 364 81
Passcode:
Q7ZC9F8B
