Data Warehousing
The data warehousing group, headed by Keith Marsolo, PhD, has continued its work to add more data from the enterprise Epic electronic health record (EHR) into the de-identified i2b2 warehouse and continues to provide investigators with more than 100 research datasets each year. The i2b2 group is participating in a national demonstration project to create a federated network of data warehouses from seven academic health centers (including the five Harvard teaching hospitals) using the Shared Health Research Information NEtwork (SHRINE). The aims of this project are to prove the feasibility of creating such data sharing networks and to examine co-morbidities in patients with diabetes mellitus II or autism spectrum disorder. The warehouse group also has been active in supporting the institution’s efforts to create a research biorepository. They successfully deployed an application that allows biorepository staff to scan a clinical sample and determine whether it can be reused for research purposes. They are working to interface biosample processing instruments with the institutional biorepository and to interface the biorepository with the i2b2 data warehouse, allowing investigators to include sample criteria in their cohort search. Work in the coming year will enable investigators to send a request for samples to the biorepository using the i2b2 interface.
Software Development
The software development group continues to provide investigators with web-based tools to support research studies, learning networks and other collaborations. The group has developed the data infrastructure used by the three multi-center quality improvement networks supported by the Ohio Best Evidence for Advancing Child health in Ohio Now (BEACON). These groups are focused in improving outcomes in childhood obesity, children’s mental health and in reducing preterm births in Ohio. They are developing patient-facing registries for patients with eosinophilic esophagitis or a bone marrow transplant and research registries for the intestinal rehab team. The software development group is developing the data collection and reporting infrastructure for the nationwide Solutions for Patient Safety collaborative and is working with investigators in pharmacology and kidney transplant to create a “drug dashboard” that will pull together adherence data (from electronic pill bottles), clinical data and pharmacogenomics information and provide care recommendations, allowing investigators to perform pre-clinic planning.
