Benefits of CDEs

The NINR, in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine, has developed an NINR CDE Portal to help clinical investigators employ standardized data collection techniques as they design and conduct new clinical studies. The use of CDEs in NINR funded studies will help:

• Reduce the time and cost needed to develop data collection tools
• Promote standardized, consistent, and universal data collection
• Improve data quality
• Facilitate data sharing
• Improve opportunities for meta-analysis and comparison of results from different studies

While the use of CDEs is not currently a requirement across all NINR supported projects, researchers who receive funding from NINR are encouraged to use the CDEs in their studies and data management systems whenever possible. The CDEs do not include all variables that clinical investigators may need to collect in a particular study. NINR recognizes that the most important outcome variables collected by a study may not be incorporated into existing CDEs. However, the NINR CDE Working Group is developing new data elements in order to increase the efficiency and consistency of data collection and to promote data sharing. The NINR CDE Working Group permits the inclusion of innovative, creative, and unique data elements by allowing investigators to independently identify and add their own critical variables.