New to OMOP & OHDSI? Start here
You do not need to be a data scientist to get value from the OMOP common data model. Short videos, a starter path, dated worked examples, the foundational reading, curated maternal and child health talks, and a shortcut into the OHDSI forums.
Written about people like you
JAMIA Open. If you're a maternal & child health expert stepping into observational research, this evaluation of a maternal health RWE fellowship is the closest thing to a roadmap for the journey you're starting.
Watch first
A few minutes each. Start with the gentle introduction, then the ATLAS demo.
Full playlist on @DrDanielleTheDataDiva.
Free resources
Free, canonical places to build a foundation: read, reference, take a course, and try the tools.
The community's free textbook, and the best single starting point for the CDM, vocabularies, cohorts, and network studies.
The table-by-table specification for the current CDM version.
Browse the tables and fields of the CDM in plain language, 258 fields across 24 tables. Search a term or filter to one table.
Download and browse the OMOP standardized vocabularies, where clinical concepts live.
Free self-paced courses on the CDM, vocabularies, ETL, and the OHDSI tool stack.
Working groups (including pediatrics and women's health), community calls, and the annual symposium.
The browser-based cohort and analysis tool. Try it on the public demo, no install needed.
The full open-source stack for building and running observational studies.
Then try it
Shape a clinical idea into a well-formed OHDSI research question and check how feasible it looks as a network study.
Launch the Analytic Use-Case GeneratorLearn by doing
Pick a clinical idea you already know and use it to learn the tools. Each walkthrough runs from a vocabulary search in ATHENA, through the same search in ATLAS, to a concept set, a cohort, and a research question. Each is dated, because the vocabularies change.
Example 01 · Current as of 1 Aug 2026
Search menopause in ATHENA and see what a vocabulary search actually returns, find the same concepts in ATLAS, then build a concept set and a cohort and turn them into a research question.
Open the exampleExample 02 · Current as of 4 Aug 2026
Preterm labor is not preterm birth, and the vocabulary keeps them apart. Build both concept sets, see which one your question needs, and check whether your data source can answer it.
Open the exampleThen write it up
A form that drafts the main sections of an observational study manuscript from what you already know, following the RECORD reporting statement.
Draft it
Enter the parts of your study you already know and get a first draft of the main manuscript sections, with prompts mapped to the RECORD reporting statement. Export to Word, and save your answers so you can regenerate later. Basic guidance to get you started, not a replacement for your own writing.
Open the starterCheck what stuck
A self-paced quiz on the basics covered by the cheat sheets and the worked examples. Nothing is recorded and there is no time limit.
Quiz yourself
Sixty-nine questions on concepts and vocabularies, domains and the tables that store them, concept sets, cohort definitions, pathways, and using ATHENA and ATLAS. Questions are drawn at random and the answers shuffled, so every run is different. Answers are explained as you go.
Start the quizKeep at your elbow
Printable quick-reference sheets; written against OMOP CDM v5.4.
Sheet 01
Concepts, standard vs classification vs source, mappings, the hierarchy, and the code snippets you actually write.
Open sheetSheet 02
The five moving parts: entry, initial event limit, inclusion, exit and censoring, plus worked patterns and what to export.
Open sheetSheet 03
Target and event cohorts, persistence windows, a session flow that works, and how to read the sunburst and the tables.
Open sheetGo deeper
A deeper set once you are ready, grouped by theme. You do not need all of these on day one, since the Book of OHDSI above plus the founding vision paper is plenty to start.
Vision & community
The founding statement of the collaborative and its goals.
Reliability and calibration
Introduces empirical calibration against negative controls.
Extends calibration from p-values to confidence intervals using positive and negative controls.
The OHDSI methods benchmark and reference-set thinking behind method evaluation.
Estimation, prediction & phenotypes
Flagship demonstration of high-throughput, systematically calibrated network estimation.
The PLP framework for building and evaluating prediction models on observational data.
Estimating phenotype sensitivity/specificity/PPV without chart review.
Data quality, privacy & SDoH
Conformance, completeness and plausibility crossed with verification and validation, which is the data-quality backbone.
The Kahn framework as executable checks, and the write-up behind the DataQualityDashboard.
The Shift-and-Truncate method for obscuring dates while preserving within-patient intervals.
Applies DQ dimensions to social-determinants variables; plausibility is the top issue.
Search the whole corpus
Articles, videos, repositories, discussions, and documentation with relevance scoring. Try maternal, pregnancy, or pediatric.
Protocols & study packages
An example OHDSI study package for checking that your site can run a network study using HADES, and the cleanest way to see how one is structured before building your own.
Watch
Hand-picked talks from the OHDSI community rather than whatever is newest. More on OHDSI's channel and Dr. Danielle the Data Diva.
Join the conversation
The forums are where the community works things out. These run a live search on forums.ohdsi.org for maternal and child health topics.
Popular MCH searches