Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41326304›Full record

ArticleThe journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease2025

A benchmark of text embedding models for semantic harmonization of Alzheimer's disease cohorts.

Tim Adams, Yasamin Salimi, Mehmet Can Ay, Diego Valderrama, Marc Jacobs, Holger Fröhlich

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Tim AdamsDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany.
Yasamin SalimiDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany.
Mehmet Can AyDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany.
Diego ValderramaDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany.
Marc JacobsDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany.
Holger FröhlichDepartment of Bioinformatics, Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI), Sankt, Augustin, 53757, Germany; Bonn-Aachen International Center for IT, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Institute for Digital Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany. Electronic address: holger.froehlich@scai.fraunhofer.de.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundHarmonizing diverse healthcare datasets is a challenging task due to inconsistent naming conventions. Manual harmonization is time- and resource-intensive, limiting scalability for multi-cohort Alzheimer's Disease research. Large Language Models, or specifically text-embedding models, offer a promising solution, but their rapid development necessitates continuous, domain-specific benchmarking, especially since general established benchmarks lack clinical data harmonization use cases.

objectivesTo evaluate how different text-embedding models perform for the harmonization of clinical variables. DESIGN AND

settingWe created a novel benchmark to assess how well different Language Model embeddings can be used to harmonize cohort study metadata with an in-house Common Data Model that includes cohort-to-cohort mappings for a wide range of Alzheimer's Disease cohorts. We evaluated five different state-of-the-art text embedding models for seven different data sets in the context of Alzheimer's disease.

participantsNo patient data were utilized for any of the analyses, as the evaluation was based on semantic harmonization of cohort metadata only. MEASUREMENTS: Text descriptions of variables from different modalities were included for the analyses, namely clinical, lifestyle, demographics, and imaging.

resultsOur benchmark results favored different models compared to general-purpose benchmarks. This suggests that models fine-tuned for generic tasks may not translate well to real-world data harmonization, particularly in Alzheimer's disease. We propose guidelines to format metadata to facilitate manual or model-assisted data harmonization. We introduce an open-source library (https://github.com/SCAI-BIO/ADHTEB) and an interactive leaderboard (https://adhteb.scai.fraunhofer.de) to aid future model benchmarking.

conclusionsOur findings highlight the importance of domain-specific benchmarks for clinical data harmonization in the field of Alzheimer's disease and motivate standards for naming conventions that may support semi-automated mapping applications in the future.

Indexed as

Alzheimer’s diseaseHarmonizationLarge language modelsText-embeddings

Identifiers

PMID41326304
PMCPMC12811766

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.