Dec. 12, 2011 | UAMS clinical leadership and researchers now have access to a data warehouse that integrates information on more than 500,000 patients.

The first phase of what is expected to be a multi-phase project is online with access to records from the UAMS inpatient, outpatient, lab and registration records systems. Planning for a second phase is under way now with expected completion in the fall 2012. The second phase will integrate physician billing information and records from Area Health Education Center (AHEC) clinics and the UAMS Tissue Procurement Facility.

A key initiative of UAMS Translational Research Institute, UAMS IT, and Biomedical Informatics Division in the College of Medicine, the UAMS Enterprise Data warehouse will provide standardized quality improvement reporting, including disease management and reports of performance metrics of interest to UAMS clinical leadership. Six types of quality improvement reports also are being developed to give clinics and clinical programs administrators a new way to track the quality of care and how our performance compares to industry standards.

The enterprise data warehouse also will provide another tool for researchers striving to turn basic science discoveries into new medical treatments. Researchers can login using their UAMS IDs, and can search de-identified diagnoses, demographic information (gender, age, race, etc.) and lab results.

For example, a researcher could find out how many people have been treated for diabetes at UAMS who were male or over a certain age. Or there could be a search for patients diagnosed with high blood pressure who are taking an ACE inhibitor medication.

When the researcher identifies a group of patients sharing a set of circumstances, the next step will be a formal research proposal to the Institutional Review Board. With IRB approval, the researcher will receive identified patient record set from data warehouse as per approved protocol.

Aaron Abend, managing director of health care datawarehousing company Recombinant, which helped with the initiative, recently presented a demonstration on campus of the warehouse’s capabilities. Abend noted that no other client of Recombinant has put as much emphasis on data quality improvement and development of a Master Patient Index and a similar index for physicians – which gives patients and physicians a unique ID to avoid duplication or redundancy.

He also praised UAMS for implementation of caBIG, a cancer research database that connects cancer researchers nationally and internationally. Together with the data warehouse, he said, UAMS is demonstrating best practices for equipping its scientists with high-quality data for research efforts.

For more information about the data warehouse, please contact project manager Irfan Chaudhry at iachaudhry@uams.edu or (501)686-8595.