We have just released our latest Frailomic consortium newsletter that you can read here [1]. In this edition we report on the validation phase meeting held in Getafe, Spain on 19 January 2015. This meeting marks an important milestone for the FRAILOMIC project. The objective of this meeting was to provide each of the partner organisations with the opportunity to discuss processing and handling of biological samples involved in the validation phase of the project.

Professor Leocadio Rodriguez Mañas opened the meeting by welcoming everyone and giving the participants an update on the status of the project. He described how during 2014 the exploratory phase biological samples had been sent to the various laboratories. In addition, he reported how the study database had been populated with epidemiological and clinical data from the various cohorts. These two achievements in themselves represent significant progress in project implementation.

De David Gómez Cabrero gave an illuminating presentation describing the methodological aspects of the harmonisation process that represents a critical aspect of the FRAILOMIC project. The harmonisation process serves to control for differences in the data for the many variables (for example, frailty and Activities of Daily Living terms) that were derived from the various cohorts studied in our project. The process of harmonisation serves to provide coherence to measurements made at different sites during different studies, possibly with different scales, units and/or methodologies. It is easy to see how this was a Herculean task. More detail is provided in the newsletter and on the consortium website [1,2].

References

1. Frailomic consortium newsletter #5
2. www.frailomic.org