What Every Reader Should Know About Studies Using Electronic Health Record Data but May Be Afraid to Ask

Isaac S Kohane   ¹ , MD, PhD ;   Bruce J Aronow   ² , PhD ;   Paul Avillach   ¹ , MD, PhD ;   Brett K Beaulieu-Jones   ¹ , PhD ;   Riccardo Bellazzi   ^{3, 4} , PhD ;   Robert L Bradford   ⁵ , BSc ;   Gabriel A Brat   ¹ , MD, MPH ;   Mario Cannataro   ^{6, 7} , MS ;   James J Cimino   ⁸ , MD ;   Noelia García-Barrio   ⁹ , MS ;   Nils Gehlenborg   ¹ , PhD ;   Marzyeh Ghassemi   ¹⁰ , PhD ;   Alba Gutiérrez-Sacristán   ¹ , PhD ;   David A Hanauer   ¹¹ , MS, MD ;   John H Holmes   ¹² , PhD ;   Chuan Hong   ¹ , PhD ;   Jeffrey G Klann   ^{13, 14} , PhD ;   Ne Hooi Will Loh   ¹⁵ , MBBS, FRCA, FFICM, EDIC ;   Yuan Luo   ¹⁶ , PhD ;   Kenneth D Mandl   ¹⁷ , MPH, MD ;   Mohamad Daniar   ¹⁸ , MSIS ;   Jason H Moore   ¹⁹ , PhD ;   Shawn N Murphy   ^{1, 20} , MD, PhD ;   Antoine Neuraz   ^{21, 22} , MD ;   Kee Yuan Ngiam   ¹⁵ , MBBS, MRCS, MMed ;   Gilbert S Omenn   ²³ , MD, PhD ;   Nathan Palmer   ¹ , PhD ;   Lav P Patel   ²⁴ , MS ;   Miguel Pedrera-Jiménez   ⁹ , MS ;   Piotr Sliz   ¹⁷ , PhD ;   Andrew M South   ²⁵ , MS, MD ;   Amelia Li Min Tan   ^{1, 26} , BSc, PhD ;   Deanne M Taylor   ^{27, 28} , PhD ;   Bradley W Taylor   ²⁹ , MS ;   Carlo Torti   ⁷ , MD ;   Andrew K Vallejos   ²⁹ , MS ;   Kavishwar B Wagholikar   ^{13, 14} , MBBS, PhD ;   The Consortium For Clinical Characterization Of COVID-19 By EHR (4CE)   ³⁰ ;   Griffin M Weber   ^{1 *} , MD, PhD ;   Tianxi Cai   ^{1 *} , SCD

¹ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

² Biomedical Informatics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United States

³ Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

⁴ ICS Maugeri, Pavia, Italy

⁵ North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States

⁶ Data Analytics Research Center, University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

⁷ Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University Magna Graecia of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy

⁸ Informatics Institute, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, United States

⁹ Department of Informatics, 12 de Octubre University Hospital, Madrid, Spain

¹⁰ Department of Computer Science and Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

¹¹ Department of Learning Health Sciences, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

¹² Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

¹³ Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

¹⁴ Laboratory of Computer Science, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

¹⁵ National University Health Systems, Singapore, Singapore

¹⁶ Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States

¹⁷ Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

¹⁸ Clinical Research Informatics, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

¹⁹ Institute for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

²⁰ Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States

²¹ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Necker-Enfant Malades Hospital, Assistance Publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France

²² Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, INSERM UMRS 1138 Team 22, Université de Paris, Paris, France

²³ Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

²⁴ Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Informatics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, KS, United States

²⁵ Section of Nephrology, Department of Pediatrics, Brenner Children's Hospital, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC, United States

²⁶ Department of Biomedical Informatics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

²⁷ Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States

²⁸ Department of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine, The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States

²⁹ Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States

³⁰ See Acknowledgments, Boston, MA, United States

*these authors contributed equally