#FellowFriday: Sarah MacHarg

Sarah MacHarg
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)  

We are working to develop a pipeline that interprets data elements/measurement structures in NIDDK Central Repository studies. The pipeline will determine if an element is an already-defined Common Data Element (CDE) from the National Library of Medicine CDE repository, or if the element appears across multiple studies and is therefore a potential candidate for a new CDE.  

Touching people’s lives.

I’ve always wanted to work on a meaningful project, something that could touch people’s lives rather than remaining confined to a small subset of a private organization. I’m also looking forward to learning about the NIH and civic technology in general, both from my team of supervisors/mentors and from the other fellows; everyone has unique experiences, expertise and advice to offer, and I’m excited to continue to grow from our conversations over the weeks to come. 

Motivating and empowering. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve learned that an immense amount of effort has gone into developing the CDE repository and the NIDDK central repository, not to mention the hours spent compiling the research and data that those repositories house. It’s very exciting to stand on the shoulders of giants and work on a tool that could help link everyone’s hard work together. Being able to see a direct connection between my project and the research scientists are doing every day, especially given the context of the pandemic, is motivating and empowering.