To strengthen the cross-institutional research relationship between USC and CHLA, the SC CTSI is leading the development and implementation of a clinical data warehouse for research. The warehouse will aggregate information on demographics, diagnoses, medications, laboratory values, and imaging results from enterprise-wide EHRs into a single repository to allow the discovery, reuse and sharing of existing clinical data for research. The research data warehouse initiative will take advantage of the common Cerner Millenium EHR used by USC and CHLA and will make patient data accessible to appropriately approved researchers, who can explore the data to determine potential participant cohorts, recruit, and test hypotheses related to clinical care and health outcomes — powerful capabilities that leverage a dataset of this scale. Although full functionality to use re-identified data for recruitment will not be available until the last quarter of 2015, the ability to use de-identified data to project potential study cohorts is targeted for the spring of 2015. As part of the research data warehouse initiative, SC CTSI has created a collaborative working group with representatives from USC Offices of Research and Compliance, Keck Medicine of USC and CHLA. The data sharing agreements created by this group will provide a model to other collaborative ventures seeking to promote maximal inclusion of clinical data while still preserving patient confidentiality. As standards for the reuse of clinical data for research purposes are evolving, SC CTSI and its university compliance partners intend to remain at the forefront of ethical and compliant research conduct. Once the research data warehouse is implemented across USC and CHLA, the SC CTSI plans to expand these capabilities to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which is also implementing a Cerner Millenium EHR. DHS leadership has been actively involved in and supportive of this project, which would greatly expand the ability of our faculty members to conduct clinical, health services, health outcomes and implementation research with the DHS.

These two enterprise-wide initiatives will greatly expand the commitment and capabilities of USC and CHLA in clinical research. Look forward to more information in these pages as the projects progress.