ddharmon 0.6.1

Data Dictionary Harmonization Tool: cluster equivalent variables across data dictionaries and anchor them to Common Data Elements (CDEs)

ddharmon — Data Dictionary Harmonization Tool

ddharmon harmonizes biomedical data dictionaries: it identifies clusters of equivalent variables across studies and recommends a Common Data Element (CDE) anchor for each — routing every recommendation to expert review.

Where ddharmon sits: cluster variables + CDEs → anchor a CDE per sub-cluster (or generate a novel one) → expert review — alongside related public tools and the broader Phenome Health stack.

Quick start

Requirements: Python 3.12+ and uv.

git clone https://github.com/Phenome-Health/ddharmon.git
cd ddharmon
uv sync --extra all
cp .env.example .env        # set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for the classify pass (sync/batch)

Then open the end-to-end notebook notebooks/clustering/v1_harmonization_pipeline.ipynb — it runs the full pipeline (ingest → embed → cluster → value sub-cluster → CDE anchor → adopt/refine/novel → review) on example data and is the best place to start.

The NIH CDE catalog is not bundled. To anchor against CDEs, flatten the CDE repository locally with scripts/flatten_cde_repo.py <All-CDEs.json> <out.tsv>; without it, the pipeline still clusters and sub-clusters cohort variables (cdeSet = none).

Related work

Framing biomedical variable/CDE harmonization as an embedding → clustering → optional LLM problem is an active line of work; ddharmon builds directly on it. The closest tools (full lineage and citations in docs/v1_methods.md):

• CDEMapper (Wang et al., JAMIA 2025) — LLM-powered mapping of local data elements to NIH CDEs via semantic indexing + BM25 + GPT candidates + human review. Per-element lookup.
• Krishnamurthy et al., 2025 (arXiv:2506.02160) — embeds ~24k NIH CDEs and clusters them with HDBSCAN, then LLM-labels the clusters. Clusters the target CDE repository.
• Salimi et al., 2025 (Sci Rep) — the PASSIONATE Parkinson's variable-mapping ground truth; shows language-model embeddings beat fuzzy string matching for pairwise cohort harmonization (frames matching as a clustering task, but stops at t-SNE visualization).
• DataTecnica — DIVER / RoP (Long et al., medRxiv 2024) — LLMs generate and audit CDEs at scale (GenCDEs); the RoP release ships ~1.33M harmonized CDEs with embeddings. Closest to generating novel CDEs.
• Harmony (McElroy et al., BMC Psychiatry 2024), Semantic Search Helper (Gottfried 2025), datastew, and BDI-Kit (Lopez et al., Patterns 2026) — embedding/LLM harmonization and schema/value-matching siblings.

What ddharmon adds

These tools tend to cluster either a CDE repository or a single cohort, use a single semantic vector, and map element-by-element. ddharmon targets the gaps that matter for harmonizing many studies at once:

• Multi-cohort, source and target together. Cohort variables and the NIH CDE catalog are embedded and clustered in one space, so equivalent variables across many studies surface as a single cluster — not one pairwise lookup at a time.
• Dual-vector, value-aware sub-clustering. Each field gets a semantic vector (what it measures) and a value vector (how it is answered). Semantic vectors cluster the concept; value vectors sub-cluster within a concept by encoding shape — so "age in years" and "age bracket" land in different sub-clusters. Antecedents use a single vector and flat clusters.
• A recommended CDE anchor per sub-cluster — with a novel-CDE path. Each value sub-cluster is anchored to the best in-cluster CDE (medoid → canonicalness → metadata richness). When no existing CDE fits, the sub-cluster is flagged for a generated (GenCDE) novel CDE instead of being forced onto a poor match.
• adopt / refine / novel → expert review. One classify-only LLM call per sub-cluster proposes adopt / refine / novel against the anchor and routes every recommendation to expert-in-the-loop (EITL) review — nothing is auto-applied.

How it works

ingest (cohorts + CDE)
  → dual-vector embed (semantic + value)
    → semantic cluster (BERTopic)
      → value sub-cluster (HDBSCAN on value vectors, per topic)
        → CDE anchor per sub-cluster (medoid → best in-cluster CDE; GenCDE fallback)
          → adopt / refine / novel  (single classify-only LLM call)
            → EITL review queue

Full algorithm, parameters, and lineage are in docs/v1_methods.md. The research contributions held for a pending publication — LLM coherence judging, concept labeling, transformation-spec authoring, granularity-loss detection, deep recursive clustering, and a CDE common data model — are not in v1; see CHANGELOG.md.

Installation

The core install is lightweight; optional extras unlock additional capabilities.

Extra	Use case
(none)	Core ingestion + lexical matching
embeddings	sentence-transformers + faiss-cpu — semantic embedding + vector search
clustering	scikit-learn, UMAP, plotly
bertopic	BERTopic topic modeling
llm	openai, anthropic — LLM classify / rerank
all	everything above (required to run the full pipeline + notebook)
dev	all + pytest, ruff, black, pyright

pip install "ddharmon[all]"          # full pipeline
# or, with uv (recommended for development):
uv sync --extra all

Development

./scripts/check.sh     # lint, format, typecheck, test
./scripts/fix.sh       # auto-fix lint + format
pytest                 # tests

Project structure

src/ddharmon/
├── models/          # data models (plain dataclasses)
├── ingestion/       # multi-cohort + CDE dictionary parsers
├── embedding/       # dual-vector embedding (semantic + value), SQLite cache
├── clustering/      # BERTopic semantic clustering + value sub-clustering
├── harmonization/   # v1: CDE anchoring + adopt/refine/novel + EITL export
├── matching/        # pairwise 1:1 matching (built; not in the v1 surface)
├── llm/             # LLM clients + Anthropic Batch API
├── values/          # value-encoding parsing
└── export/          # visualization (dendrograms, UMAP, Plotly)
notebooks/clustering/v1_harmonization_pipeline.ipynb
scripts/             # flatten_cde_repo, build_clsa_csv, prompt runners, check/fix
tests/

Roadmap (beyond v1)

• Web GUI — under development; the point-and-click app (upload dictionaries → run with live progress → review recommendations → export) will ship as added functionality of biomapper-ui.
• Pairwise 1:1 mapping as a first-class surface (the engine is built).
• Standards mapping (LOINC / SNOMED / OMOP).
• LLM coherence judging, concept labeling, and transformation-spec authoring (publication-pending).

License

MIT — see LICENSE. © 2026 Phenome Health.