Health IT and big data have the potential to revolutionize clinical research and, at the Columbia University Medical Center, the implementation of a centralized research data repository helped researchers produce more studies with more value, according to a case report published online Jan. 15 by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

“By reusing rich clinical data from EHRs and other databases, retrospective studies require no patient intervention defined a priori but reflect real-world decision-making scenarios and are less expensive than prospective randomized controlled clinical trials,” wrote lead author Gregory Hruby, MA, a member of the clinical informatics team at the Columbia University Medical Center.

In 2001, the department of urology at the facility implemented a basic data management strategy to enable outcomes research, but it quickly proved inadequate. Data redundancy was one problem and incomprehensible or missing datasets were another. To allow more advanced outcomes research, the department shopped around for and invested in a centralized research data repository (CRDR), settling on an open-source, web-based data management system.

After receiving reassurance from the IT department and the chief security officer that the CRDR was compliant with HIPAA regulations, it was populated with data from two sources, electronic billing records and pre-existing datasets. The new tool quickly became popular among the department’s researchers, with more than 60 percent of clinical research and all basic science researchers using the CRDR.

When researchers investigated the quality and quantity of research papers produced by the department, they found the average publication rate increased from an average of 11.5 annually to 25.6 annually after implementation and that the average impact score of papers also improved. The improvements were due to the CRDR, which reduced researchers’ need for additional human assistance, simplified data collection and improved data quality, according to Hruby.

“The most rewarding outcome from the CRDR implementation was the emergence of a new research model that transformed the research workflow and improved research efficiency and quality on multiple levels,” he concluded.