Data House Calls

Our Data House Calls are a chance to leverage our staff’s expertise to help you get where you want to go with your data science skills, data management plans and execution, computing needs and beyond. Data House Calls are meant to be topical, focused on solving specific problems or discussing specific topics and function sometimes as a navigation tool to refer people to where they need to go even if we don’t have all the answers.

Typically 1-2 DaSL staff members are available for any given topic with an eye toward keeping availability high to ensure a fairly rapid timeframe between when people need the help and when they can sign up for it and get it.

Schedule a Data House Call.

Fred Hutch and UW Medicine staff can now schedule on-call Data House Calls here and select one of the data oriented topics (or when in doubt, you can always schedule a General Data House Call). See below for descriptions about each Data House Call Type.

Data House Call Topics

General

Use this Data House Call to discuss how our group can help connect you with the right resources to support your work. For anything that doesn’t fit into the other topics, or if you are unsure of which to pick, this DHC is the one.

Schedule this Data House Call.

Clinical Data Governance

We provide guidance on accessing and using patient and healthcare data for research in compliance with policies and governance requirements. Topics may include navigating RADaR, disclosure processes for PHI, use of CARDS resources for IRB protocols, and cross-institutional data sharing. Sharing your needs in advance helps us bring in the right experts to address your questions efficiently.

Use this Data House Call for questions about:

  • Support navigating patient data access through RADaR (Research Access to Data Review for Healthcare data),

  • Guidance regarding data governance, data access, disclosure process requirements for Healthcare data (PHI),

  • Information on current policies or processes for appropriate data access, use, and sharing such as CARDS Data Resource Supplement requests for IRB protocols,

  • Support for gaining access to or using patient data for a different purpose where a governance review of your use case may be required,

  • Questions regarding Consortium data governance and sharing relationships such as UWM and Seattle Children’s.

Note: We often pull in folks from the DaSL team to provide expert advice so please describe the resource in question and your specific needs with that resource so we can try to have the right staff ready.

Schedule this Data House Call.

Research Data and AI Support

We provide guidance on ethical AI use with patient and research data, research data tooling support, data use agreements, and regulated data stewardship. We can also assist with preparing funding agency data sharing plans, the NIH Genomic Data Use Certification process, and genomic data stewardship plans. We focus on areas managed by the OCDO and can connect you to other experts for topics outside our scope.

Use this Data House Call for questions about:

  • Artificial Intelligence Review (AIR) support, guidance for use of AI with patient and research data and broadly approved AI use case guidance,
  • Get guidance regarding what aspects of our data tools and infrastructure supports your intended work,
  • Ask questions about Data Use Agreements and get Regulated Data Stewardship support,
  • Ask questions and get help preparing NIH or other funding agency Data Sharing Plans,
  • Get guidance on the NIH Data Use Certification Process and assistants with creating a NIH Genomic Data Stewardship Plan.

Note, many of these topics can be supported by various other subject matter expert groups at the Fred Hutch. This DHC serves primarily as advice where OCDO is responsible for aspects of these issues and navigation support for finding an expert to help you for those aspects that we are not.

Schedule this Data House Call].

Research Computing and Data Management

We support research data management and scaling up your data analysis using Fred Hutch infrastructure and recommended tools. This includes guidance around where to store your data so you can develop scalable analyses and leverage our computing resources for your work. We often pull in support from Scientific Computing when your questions relate also to infrastructure based on the notes you provide.

Use this Data House Call for questions about how to run your code or analysis more effectively and scale up your work via:

  • Using our computing cluster
  • Writing and running scientific workflows
  • Bioinformatics software and environment management (including Docker!)
  • Leveraging Git/GitHub for code management and sharing
  • Accessing data in our various storage locations and public datasets such as reference datasets including genome data, common bioinformatic tool reference data sets
  • Collaboration and sharing of workflows, environments and large datasets

Or other questions you have that you feel might relate to this topic!

Note: Often we pull in folks from the Scientific Computing or Data Governance teams to provide expert advice as well so please describe your needs well so we can try to have the right staff ready.

Schedule this Data House Call.

Code and Software: R, Python and Beyond

We are here to field questions about writing code, working with software, managing computing environments, and software development. If you are working with or learning R, Python, Conda, Git/GitHub, the command line, Shiny, Jupyter, VSCode, or anything related we are happy to talk.

Use this Data House Call for questions about learning, writing and managing code and research software such as:

  • R
  • Python
  • Bash
  • Git/GitHub
  • User developed applications

Or other questions you have that you feel might relate to this topic!

Schedule this Data House Call.

DaSL Supported Resources

We provide support for questions about DaSL-supported resources like PROOF, cBioPortal, WILDS, or SciWiki. We can help you learn what these tools do, how to use them, and ways you can leverage them in your work. Based on your notes we can bring in the right DaSL experts to help if you have specific questions.

Use this Data House Call in order to:

  • Learn what the resource is – Understand its purpose, key features, and where it fits into your work.
  • Explore how to use it – Get guidance on setup, navigation, and best practices.
  • Troubleshoot issues – Work through roadblocks with help from DaSL experts.

When booking, please include the name of the resource and your specific questions so we can bring the right DaSL team members to provide targeted guidance.

Schedule this Data House Call.

Using Healthcare Data for Research

We support research use of healthcare data for research including finding data you need and learning to develop cohorts and queries that are useful for answering research questions. We also support facilitated data extract requests for research and can discuss what our team can help you with today and in the future as we begin sharing multimodal healthcare datasets for research.

Use this Data House Call meet with us about how we can help you with using healthcare data for research to answer questions such as:

  • I’m doing a retrospective study on prostate cancer patients, how far back to PSA lab values go?
  • I’m recruiting for a clinical research study, how do I find a list of potentially eligible patients?
  • I’m studying the social and behavioral determinants of health on treatment outcomes, how do I find questionnaire data collected in the clinic for my cohort of patients?

Schedule this Data House Call.