Professor Howard and David attended the 84th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA). It was held from June 21 to 24 in Orlando, Florida, hosting experts in diabetes research from all over the world. The event brought together leading scientists, healthcare professionals, and stakeholders to discuss critical issues, including advancements in diabetes technology. It also showcased cutting-edge research and innovations in diabetes treatment and management, ranging from obesity and GLP-1 receptor agonists to autoantibody testing and early diabetes detection.

The event also provided a memorable venue for Prof. Howard and David, where they presented their work on “Developing Machine Learning Model for Predicting Acute Coronary Syndrome in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients through Substitution of Propensity Scores for Binary Variables”. During the poster presentation session, questions were asked and answered, ideas were exchanged, and constructive comments were offered. The event, along with the opportunity to present the work, paved the way for improving the study and provided a valuable experience to learn from world-renowned researchers.

The study "Effectiveness and Safety of Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitors Added to Dual or Triple Treatment in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus," authored by Yesol Hong, Yoomin Jeon, Yoona Choi, Tae Kyu Chung, and Howard Lee, was published in the Diabetes Therapy on December 20, 2023. Conducted at Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) in South Korea, this research by the CCADD team delved into the use of Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter 2 Inhibitors (SGLT2i) in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) treatment. The study, utilizing Real-World Data (RWD) from electronic medical records (EMR) from SNUH's a Common Data Model database, revealed improvements in HbA1c levels and a higher rate of patients achieving targeted HbA1c levels with SGLT2i therapy.

Furthermore, CCADD is dedicated to continuing its use of EMR-based RWD to generate important clinical evidence, particularly in areas where Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) may face limitations. This commitment underscores CCADD's role in advancing medical research and improving patient care through innovative data utilization.

Prof. Howard Lee gave a talk at an invited symposium in association with the Annual Conference of the Korean Society of Medical Informatics (KoSMI), held both online and offline on November 29, 2023. The title of his presentation was ‘Performance Increase of the Machine Learning Model to Predict Acute Coronary Syndrome in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus by Replacing Binary Variables with Propesnsity Score’. This presentation was a culmination of a research project with the same title supported by the Seokcheon Foundation, 2023, where the current and former CCADD graduate students, namely David Seung U Lee, Jung-Hyun Won, and YeSol Hong collectively contributed by proposing a new novel way to address the falseness of binary feature in the electronic medical records. Prof. Lee's speech was well received by the audience evidenced by 6 follow-up questions! The more detailed methodological aspect of Prof. Lee' talk was presented in an accepted poster led by David Seung U Lee.  

YeSol had the honor to deliver oral presentation and won the Excellent Research Award at 2022 fall conference hosted by the Korean Society of Medical Informatics(KOSMI). YeSol has presented her work entitled "Effectiveness and safety of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors(SGLT2i) added to mono, dual or triple treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus(T2DM)". She discussed the additive efficacy in glycemic control and the tolerability of SGLT2i in T2DM patients when combined with other antihyperglycemic agents, such as metformin, sulfonylureas, and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors using real-world data. Yoona Choi, TaeKyu Chung, and Yoomin Jeon also contributed to this study as co-researchers, with Professor Howard Lee serving as the principle investigator.

The conference was a three-day event (from Nov 23rd, 2022 to Nov 25th, 2022) and was held at The International Convention Center, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk, South Korea. This conference, the host(KOSMI) organized the event around the theme, "The Power and Value of Healthcare Data Linkage". The conference was full of enlightening speeches that reflected the progress made in the field of medical informatics. With a total of 1,039 participants, this conference was held on the largest scale ever among KOSMI conferences. 

The 2019 Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) Korea International Symposium was held on December 12-14 at Konjiam Resort, Korea. The symposium gathered nearly 400 participants from nine different countries, clearly showing a growing interest in the OHDSI community. The main session on the second day was followed by full-day tutorial workshops on the first day. The main session began with a warm welcome by Prof. Rong Min Baek, the Chairman of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Seoul National University College of Medicine, followed by an overview of the Korean OHDSI journey by Prof. Rae Woong Park, the Director and Professor at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Ajou University School of Medicine. Other topics in the main session included an introduction to the European Health Data & Evidence Network (EHDEN) project, the OHDSI Initiative, and the FeederNet platform. The key message from all these presentations was on generating reproducible and reliable evidence from the existing clinical data standardized by the OHDSI common data model (CDM).  

Among three parallel sessions, 'Clinical trials in OHDSI' session was newly introduced this year. This parallel session purely focused on clinical trials, which consisted of the following three invited talks: 'Introduction to clinical trials', 'Smart User-friendly CDM-based Clinical trial dEsign Support System, SUCCESS', and 'OHDSI use case: clinical trial feasibility'. Charles Joochul Lee, a general manager of Selvas AI Inc., and Ms. Yoomin Jeon were invited to give a talk on the SUCCESS project, a CDM-based simulation system to assist clinical trial feasibility and designing clinical trials. Mr. Lee introduced the principles behind why and how SUCCESS was developed. Mr. Lee then gave a demonstration of SUCCESS system. To provide a better understanding of how a CDM-based simulation system can be implemented, Yoomin spoke about a CDM-based virtual clinical trial project (from the 2nd Korea Clinical Datathon) as a case study. Using the Ajou University Hospital CDM real-world data, her team has successfully shown that patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, who are treated with metformin, sulfonylurea, and/or dipeptidylpeptidase-4 inhibitors (DPP4i), can benefit from add-on sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) treatment in terms of both additional efficacy and comparable safety. Based on the analysis using this CDM data, adding an SGLT2i has shown an additional efficacy and comparable safety profiles to those identified with SGLT2i in actual clinical trials. Yoomin concluded her talk by stating that exploring the efficacy and safety of the proposed treatment using simulation experiments can help design an optimized clinical trial, which may increase the chance of success in the clinical trials. The talks by Mr. Lee and Yoomin were well received, and an active and interesting Q & A session was followed.

The 2019 fall conference of The Korean Society of Medical Informatics (KOSMI), organized by Kyungpook National University Hospital (KNUH), was held November 8-9, 2019, at the Global Plaza, Kyunpook National University, Daegu. Prof. Howard Lee, Yoomin Jeon and Junsik Moon participated in the conference.

The conference presented 19 symposia, 6 oral presentation sessions of pre-selected paper submissions, and 3 tutorials in healthcare information, pharmaceutical and big data research which focused on analysis, application and standardization of data based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Sharing research ideas and analysis techniques, the attendees had an in-depth discussion on emerging issues and utilization in the fields of medical informatics.

On the second day, Prof. Lee chaired one of the oral presentation sessions entitled "New Drug and Pharmacovigilance", where he stressed full understanding of the research domain by communicating with experts in each research field. On the other hand, Yoomin presented two posters titled 'A Dimensionality Reduction Model to Increase the Efficiency and Accuracy of Clinical Trial Feasibility Assessment Using Electronic Medical Records' and 'A CDM-based Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of SGLT2 Inhibitors as Add-on Treatment in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus on Metformin, Sulfonylurea and/or DPP-4 Inhibitors'. Yoomin's poster presentations were well received.

Through the conference, the three members of CCADD were delighted to get introduced to the leading academicians and industry experts in the field of medical informatics. Furthermore, Prof. Lee and two CCADD members had a fun discussion that helped them look deeply into their current activities and direction of future research. Their collected insights out of the conference will be further discussed at the upcoming year-end workshop in early December.

Prof. Howard Lee and Yoomin Jeon participated in the 2nd Korea Clinical Datathon, organized by the Korea National Enterprise for Clinical Trials (KoNECT), September 20-22, 2019. The event was well-attended, which brought over 200 participants, almost doubling the number of those who joined last year. A Datathon is a type of data-focused hackathons, where interdisciplinary teams are challenged to come up with analysis results using their creativity and data science skills within a limited amount of time. The Korea Clinical Datathon aims to bring together clinicians, data scientists, statisticians, students, and those with domain-specific knowledge to brainstorm ideas and to address real-world clinical challenges by applying data analytics technologies. Participants were given access to 3 types of datasets extracted from MIMIC-III (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III), the Seoul National University Hospital VitalDB (vital signs database of surgical patients), and the Ajou University Hospital CDM (Common Data Model).

The first day kicked off with 14 different open-ended clinically relevant questions to address a variety of topics in the medical field. Prof. Lee and Yoomin were on Team 6, comprised of 13 members including four clinicians, three statisticians, one data scientist, and three students. Lead by Prof. Lee, Team 6 came up with the following research question: "Are add-on sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) efficacious and safe in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus who are on metformin, sulfonylurea and/or dipeptidylpeptidase-4 inhibitors (DPP4i)?". Using the Ajou University Hospital CDM real-world data, Team 6 has successfully shown that patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus can benefit from add-on SGLT2i treatment in terms of both additional efficacy and comparable safety. Based on the analysis, adding an SGLT2i has shown reductions in HbA1c (approximately 0.76%, very similar to previous publication results) and body weight. In addition, a higher risk of urinary tract and genital infections was found, which are the most common side effects identified with SGLT2i in clinical trials. 

On the last day, the sleep-deprived but exhilarated participants presented their findings for a competition. Even though Team 6 failed to win the competition, it was a unique opportunity to get hands-on experience and to learn about possibilities of how machine learning/statistics/data analytic skills can address current challenges in healthcare.