dietary supplements in hand

A Translational Informatics Framework to Mine Efficacy and Safety of Dietary Supplements

Problem and Need for the Study

Most U.S. adults (77%) take dietary supplements (DS) and 87% of them express overall confidence in the safety, quality and efficacy of DS. However, DS are not always safe. DS information is scattered in biomedical literature, social media, and FDA spontaneous reporting system. Thus, to optimize the proper and safe use of DS, there remains a critical need to develop informatics framework with innovative tools and resources to enable us better understand efficacy and safety of DS through multimodal data sources. 

Innovation and Impact

The objective of this project is to create an enriched DS knowledge base (eDISK) and to develop a translational informatics framework (iDISK-Mine) with innovative informatics approaches to facilitate DS research using real-world, multi-site EHR data. This is the first project to develop a translational informatics framework to advance our DS knowledge using multimodal data sources and enable us to understand how patients (e.g., depression patients) use DS using the real-world EHR data. The successful accomplishment of this project will deliver a novel framework with valuable tools and resources for DS clinical and translational research.

Key Personnel and Performance Sites

University of Minnesota

Headshot of Rui Zhang
  • Principal Investigators: Rui Zhang
  • Co-Investigators: Serguei Pakhomov (College of Pharmacy), Jeffrey Bishop (College of Pharmacy), Kelvin Lim (Medical School), Julian Wolfson (Division of Biostatistics), Steve Johnson (Institute for Health Informatics)

This National Center for Complementary & Integrative Health Grant is a five-year, ~$3.1 million award.
Project dates: 01-January-2023 to 30-May-2027