Summary Report: Pathfinder Studies' Outputs Workshop

Pathfinder studies provide a research methodology framework that aims to identify challenges and solutions to help accelerate the health data research cycle and enable health data research projects to provide valuable new insights. These studies seek to share their findings and solutions within the domain of open science research, empowering other research teams to access and utilise the valuable tools and methodologies generated, as well as to build data science and health research capacity.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the prominent themes that emerged during the two online workshop sessions, coordinated by the Health Data Research Global programme team, which involved global partners and focused on collaboratively identifying key outputs and stakeholders to accelerate insights into the research projects through using the pathfinder study approach. The workshop also identified challenges and proposed solutions to address these, enabling effective identification and resolution of challenges for future research projects.

In addition, the report captures the benefits of carrying out pathfinder studies, as well as the benefits that wider groups of stakeholders - including local communities and policy makers - stand to gain from both health data science projects and pathfinder studies.

The following four areas were covered during the workshop sessions:

•  Accelerating research insights in priority health areas
• Capacity building in data science
• Accelerating access, sharing and re-use of data
• Stakeholder and community engagement