Introduction

Up to 36 million people are affected by a rare disease in the European Union (EU), which is around 8% of the total EU population at the time of writing (European Commission 2022b). Like rare disease patients, data about rare diseases are often geographically fragmented. To organize the highly specialized care that patients with a rare disease need, the EU has set up European Reference Networks (ERNs) (European Commission 2017). By exchanging knowledge and information among health care providers, these networks aim to improve access to accurate diagnosis, timely treatment, and appropriate care for people living with rare diseases in Europe.

Members of an ERN share expertise on a specific group of diseases (e.g., rare bone or rare kidney diseases). According to the European Medicines Agency, patient registries collect uniform data over time about a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure (European Medicines Agency 2022). A key task of ERNs is setting up and managing patient registries, which are valuable for research, treatment and outcomes monitoring, drug development, and improving quality of care (Boulanger et al. 2020). Standardizing data management practices to allow for data linking and reuse has been known to increase the benefits of rare disease patient registries (Boulanger et al. 2020; Fink et al. 2017; Kodra et al. 2018). As a result, improving the alignment between ERNs is one of the objectives of the European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD), a project with over 130 institutions from 35 countries, including representatives of all 24 ERNs, designed to establish a self-sustaining infrastructure for rare disease research and care (Inserm 2022). The EJP RD has been supporting patient registries, managed by ERNs, in making informed choices about their data management and in harmonizing choices among registries (Dos Santos Vieira, Bernabé, and Zhang et al. 2022).

Wilkinson et al. (2016) introduced the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles, a set of high-level guidelines for research data management, stating that data should be FAIR for humans and computers. Dos Santos Vieira et al. (2022) provided insight into common challenges ERNs encountered when making their patient registry data FAIR and put forward a list of solutions that may help solve those challenges. To obtain these insights, a team of data stewards specialized in FAIR data have been working closely with ERN patient registries.

Hudson-Vitale and Moulaison-Sandy (2019) reviewed research on data management plans (DMPs) and reported that DMPs support data sharing and reuse; however, DMPs were often found to be static documents, making them less effective. Williams, Bagwell, and Zozus (2017) presented a framework for DMPs that covers topics such as personnel planning, data elements, data models, software, privacy, and data sharing practices. Since their introduction, the FAIR principles have been a staple for leveraging DMPs that should produce FAIR data. A tool for assembling DMPs is the Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW) (Pergl et al. 2019). The DSW uses dynamic questionnaires that provide context-dependent guidance, can generate DMPs from prebuilt templates, and provide metrics for compliance with the FAIR principles. Moreover, the DSW includes an expertcurated knowledge model, which represents a questionnaire, for creating DMPs for life sciences projects. In addition, Mons (2018) published a book titled Data Stewardship for Open Science that encourages readers to create their own DMPs using the DSW.

While the default knowledge models of the DSW are successful in helping data stewards create DMPs for projects in the life sciences domain, they fail to cover the domain-specific requirements of ERN rare disease patient registries. In addition, the European rare disease community, represented by the EJP RD, has made implementation choices for the FAIR principles specific to their domain (Dos Santos Vieira, Bernabé & Zhang et al. 2022). These choices should be reflected in DMPs of rare disease patient registries. Furthermore, sustaining human support for ERNs is challenging, as requirements evolve over time. Hence, there is a strong need for a maintainable data management planning tool tailored to ERN rare disease patient registries.

This paper reports on the results obtained from (1) the creation and validation of a data management planning questionnaire to guide ERN patient registries in making their data FAIR and (2) its integration with existing infrastructures around rare diseases and (FAIR) data management.

Materials and Methods

We developed a smart questionnaire for the DSW, that is, a questionnaire with mostly closed-ended questions that adapts follow-up questions based on previously given answers. This questionnaire—to guide data stewards of ERN patient registries to make their registry data FAIR—was built in four stages: (1) collect and analyze relevant knowledge sources; (2) construct a hierarchical mind map from which a DSW knowledge model was built; (3) acquire feedback from domain experts on the different topics in the questionnaire and DMP and align the content with existing tools for FAIR data management planning; and (4) set up a public instance of the DSW with the questionnaire preloaded. Figure 1 summarizes these stages.

Results

The inventory of workflow steps to make data FAIR and implementation choices suggested by the EJP RD comprises nine steps, 19 topics related to those steps, and 12 implementation choices (e.g., a certain tool or standard). Table 1 shows an overview of this inventory.

Steps, topics, and implementations were translated into questions, answers, and advice. For example, the topic ‘defining objectives’ was rephrased as ‘Have you defined objectives?’ Eventually, the mind mapping process resulted in 22 out of 41 ERN challenges identified by Dos Santos Vieira et al. (2022) being included as a question, answer, advice, or a combination of the three. Challenges that were categorized under ‘community,’ that is, alignment between ERNs, were not included as questions but were indirectly addressed by using the DSW. That is to say, enabling ERN data stewards to use the DSW with our questionnaire untangles those challenges in part. For example, ERNs found that they were unaware of choices other ERNs made, which they can now share through the DSW. Similarly, one challenge categorized under ‘training’ was also indirectly addressed (need for more information on activities of the EJP RD).

Table 2 shows the number of challenges included in the questionnaire and the motivation for why some were not. The full list of challenges and can be found in the original publication (Dos Santos Vieira, Bernabé, and Zhang et al. 2022).

The mind map was converted into a preliminary DSW knowledge model. That is, questions, answers, and advice were added to the knowledge model based on the mind map. We reused one question from the life sciences knowledge model of Hooft (2019): ‘Who is a contributor to the DMP?’ Once this preliminary version of the questionnaire was available in the DSW, we started the validation process.

Validating the correctness of the content of the questionnaire resulted in an updated version of our knowledge model. A total of 10 experts reviewed the content of the questionnaire. We received a total of 166 comments. Each chapter was assigned at least seven experts. All experts reviewed the questions in ‘Processing data’ and ‘Interpreting data.’ Table 3 shows an overview of the comments per chapter and category. Duplicate comments often regarded textual issues on flow or clarity. Experts also provided references to additional resources, such as web pages with more information on a certain topic. Structural changes asked for moving a question up or down the hierarchy or to another chapter. Software issues were related to issues with using the DSW interface, such as a nonfunctional button or a page that would not load. These issues were solved by updating to the latest version of the DSW.

After processing the feedback and updating the knowledge model, the questionnaire has 57 questions. A total of 6 questions are open-ended, and 51 questions are closed-ended. In total, 10 references were added to recipes in the FAIR Cookbook and 13 references to pages of the RDMkit. Three questions were tagged as an implementation choice for findability, 6 to accessibility, 14 to interoperability, and 21 to reusability. Thirteen questions were not tagged because they did not cover implementation choices but rather aspects like training, objectives, or administrative topics. Table 4 shows the number of questions and external references per chapter.

Figure 2 depicts a simplified view of our knowledge model and includes all topics covered by the questionnaire. This is the final model that was constructed after expert validation. The questionnaire covers a broad range of topics: building and training a team of professionals, defining data management objectives, (meta)data modeling, data elements, using common standards, using common terminology, data pseudonymization, electronic data capture, querying, metadata exposure, authentication and authorization, and informed consent. Figure 3 provides a screenshot of the chapters and top-level questions. Figure 4 provides a screenshot of how the questionnaire is presented to a user.

Discussion

The purpose of this work was to develop a smart questionnaire that guides data stewards working to make data of ERN rare disease patient registries FAIR. Data stewards of patient registries will increasingly have to manage data in ways that comply with implementation choices of the FAIR principles as recommended by their community. Standardizing data management practices of patient registries enables virtual pooling of otherwise sparse and geographically scattered rare disease data, increasing their usefulness for effective research and care. However, standardization for each of the FAIR principles in this domain is complex. ERNs face the challenge of registering data of thousands of diseases from many different sources and making that data as usable as possible within a global health data ecosystem. Our questionnaire addresses those challenges ERNs were known to commonly face and provides guidance according to the FAIR infrastructure set up by the EJP RD. The questionnaire acts as a checklist for making rare disease registries FAIR: data stewards can make sure that all boxes are checked.

Our questionnaire covers the process of making data in patient registries FAIR. Although the questions and advice are made for ERN patient registries, the questionnaire content was based on prior knowledge of FAIR data and experiences in the European rare disease community. For instance, annual Bring Your Own Data workshops have brought together FAIR data experts and rare disease data managers since 2014 (Roos et al. 2014). Workshops such as these have provided a valuable source of challenges regarding the FAIR guiding principles and proposed implementations thereof (e.g., Jacobsen, de Miranda Azevedo et al. 2020a). Furthermore, they affirmed our motivation for designing a smart questionnaire that enables data stewards to begin their FAIR journey from a variety of starting points. As a result of tailoring each topic and question to the unique needs of ERN patient registries, we have filled the gap in having a data management tool that is suitable for rare disease registries in Europe. Since this work is part of ongoing efforts of the EJP RD, integration of the DSW and questionnaire with the European infrastructure for rare disease research will be a natural next step.

Previous studies focused on DMP requirements (Williams, Bagwell & Zozus 2017) and DMPs for the life sciences domain (Pergl et al. 2019; Hooft 2019). Williams, Bagwell, and Zozus (2017) concluded that while most DMPs included components describing data reuse and sharing, few DMPs described data collection and processing practices. These last two are particularly hard to fix, as the quality of poorly collected data can most likely not be improved in retrospect. We were able to address all four topics in our questionnaire. Creating DMPs for projects in the life sciences was addressed by the original authors of the DSW. We found that by reusing parts of their knowledge model, we were able to structure our questionnaire according to a well-established model. Moreover, Jones et al. (2020) concluded that DMPs are essential for FAIR data stewardship. By adopting the DSW as a tool for making ERN patient registries FAIR, we believe our work aligns with that conclusion.

Our work has some limitations. We validated the content of the questionnaire for correctness through expert feedback, but we did not validate the impact of the questionnaire on its intended users. Therefore, further research is needed to determine whether ERN registry data stewards benefit from our tool. Furthermore, the questions and advice are specific to the situation of ERN patient registries and cannot be extrapolated to other registries or projects without modifications. Our work mainly focused on guiding ERN patient registries in making their data FAIR; nevertheless, there is clear value in aligning more types of registries as well. Registry types outside of rare diseases, as well as non-European rare disease patient registries, could fall into this category.

Our work also has several strengths. First, navigating through FAIR implementation choices via questions and answers is a different experience from filling out DMP checklists. It is anticipated that this will lead to an increase in the quality of DMPs. Second, through the DSW, data stewards can learn from the implementation choices of others. Thus, it complements in-person training and contributes to community convergence. Third, we created a single place where ERN data stewards can go for guidance on making their registry FAIR. This makes maintaining and updating the knowledge in the questionnaire easier compared to having various sources in different locations. The knowledge model can be improved by learning from users who will fill out questionnaires on the DSW platform. Moreover, the DSW software is being actively maintained, and hosting our instance on the ELIXIR infrastructure means that it can be sustained beyond the lifetime of the EJP RD.

The knowledge model we developed is publicly available (see ‘Data Availability’ section) and can be used by others to build upon or to reuse parts from. For exporting the DMP, we use a default DSW template, which we intend to customize in the near future. It may be possible to improve the guidance offered to ERN data stewards through further customization of this template. Additional research is needed to quantify the impact of our questionnaire on the (process leading to) ‘FAIRness’ of ERN patient registries. Another challenging task for further research is to extend the questionnaire to other types of resources by collaborating with resource owners and users.

Conclusions

The developed smart questionnaire for the DSW is a promising method for guiding data stewards in making their registry data FAIR. It is the first model created for the DSW that helps to standardize data management practices among ERN patient registries. Future research should focus on user validation and extending the questionnaire beyond the realm of ERNs.

Data Accessibility Statement

The smart questionnaire is available at https://smartguidance.ejprarediseases.org. (Registration is required.) A user guide and the knowledge model source files are available at https://github.com/ejp-rd-vp/smart-guidance.