Is LifeScale the Right Tool for Your Research?

LifeScale is designed to simplify access to clinical data for research by providing access to the broad data it holds without the need to perfectly specify what you’re looking for up front. This both accelerates access to data and eliminates the requirement that you know precisely what data you need before getting underway with exploration and analysis.

Unlike requesting data via the Honest Broker process, access to LifeScale requires approval by the LifeScale Governing Board and signing a Data Use Agreement (DUA). Access to LifeScale grants you access to all of the LifeScale Core Data.

Should you ultimately need identified data to conduct a study, you can complete exploratory analyses in LifeScale’s coded limited dataset, identifying all the data you need, then submit your analysis code and an IRB-approved protocol for identified data access via the Honest Broker process to obtain identified data. This is especially useful when identified data is ultimately needed but exploration is required to identify the variables needed for an analysis.

When you’ve created something within the LifeScale environment that you want to move or copy out of the environment, such as tables and figures for a manuscrip, an Honest Broker designated by the LifeScale Governing Board reviews it.

Existing Use Cases Include:

• Predictive modeling in oncology
• Risk assessment for surgery
• Chronic disease research (e.g., eye disease, asthma)
• Machine learning applications (e.g., LLM evaluation, fairness-aware AI)

LifeScale may be the right fit if you want to:

• use structured clinical data across time
• integrate social, clinical, and behavioral data sources
• collaborate in a secure cloud workspace
• analyze large datasets using R, Python, SAS or Scala

Other tools may be a better fit if you:

• prefer drag-and-drop tools and want to avoid writing code
• need rapid access to patient counts for feasibility and cohort discovery
• need real-time EHR data
• need quick exploratory analysis of prepared data
• need access to data not available in LifeScale

To determine if LifeScale is the right tool for your research, you can schedule a LifeScale Consultation with the Triage Team by emailing lifescale@osumc.edu or attend an upcoming Office Hours session.

Next, take a look at what knowledge and skills you and your team will need to be effective LifeScale users.