In a new episode of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Podcast, Lesley Curtis and Keith Marsolo of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory discuss the latest Living Textbook learning module, “Healthcare Data Interoperability and Standardization for Research.”

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Curtis and Marsolo developed the module to help researchers understand how healthcare data are collected and how those data can be used in a variety of research projects.

“For people who haven’t tried to use healthcare data before in research, it seems obvious that it should be so easy. We hear about these things and think, well surely, it all works together to help me answer my question. When in fact, it’s pretty complicated,” Curtis noted on the podcast.

“And unless you have a good understanding of how the pieces fit together and where they don’t, you might be in for a whole lot of frustration and heartache.”

Curtis is professor and chair of population health sciences at Duke University and a co–principal investigator of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Coordinating Center. Marsolo is an associate professor of population health sciences and a cochair of the NIH Collaboratory’s Electronic Health Records Core.