Harmony: Development and use of Harmony, a Natural Language Processing tool to facilitate measurement harmonisation across studies

Abstract: Integrative epidemiological and social science research has been hindered by inconsistent approaches to the measurement of similar constructs. For instance, reviews have estimated that over 280 questionnaires have been used to measure depression. One crucial approach to addressing this issue is the harmonisation of questionnaires, i.e. identifying similar question items that tap into the same symptom from different scales, and testing their measurement properties and equivalence empirically – thus enabling researchers to compare and combine findings across existing studies, even when different measures have been administered.  Successful measurement harmonisation and thus pooling of data allows not only for greater statistical power and more refined subgroup analysis, but also enhances generalizability of findings and the capacity to compare and cross validate data and findings from different contexts. I will demonstrate the new AI-driven tool called “Harmony” (https://harmonydata.ac.uk/app/#/ ) and how its  functionalities allow researchers to identify, compare and match survey items across multiple studies in a more efficient and transparent way. I will present use-case examples using real world meta-data from two UK cohort Studies, findings from our ongoing validation research and how existing platform can benefit from Harmony. In the end I would like to invite the audience to use Harmony, discuss familiar challenges and possible solutions around data harmonisation, especially considering cultural and contextual adaptations.

Co-authors: Eoin McElroy, Mauricio S Hoffmann, Thomas Wood and George Ploubidis

Presenter bio:

Dr Bettina Moltrecht is a mental health researcher at the University College London (UCL) and the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families in the UK. Bettina combines a strong clinical, tech and research background in her work. She is currently based at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies where she leads the Harmony project; and uses UK cohort and electronic health record data to investigate and model population mental health trends to identify new intervention targets. At the Anna Freud Centre she leads on the development of a new online intervention for families living with parental mental illness and is co-investigator on a large clinical randomised control trial to investigate the impact of mentalization-based treatment on emotion regulation in children.