Overview

The Tufts CTSI Informatics Program procures quality data for researchers and provides data analysis services. To support clinical and translational research, we maintain the Tufts Research Data Warehouse (TRDW), a unified repository of Tufts Medicine clinical data including data from Epic and historical Tufts Medical Center data sources.

To explore active research projects ongoing in the area of clinical data and informatics, please visit the Center for Advanced Healthcare Research and Informatics, in the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies (ICRHPS) at Tufts Medical Center.

Resources and Services

Grant/Protocol Development (Pre-Award) and Study Feasibility Services

The following Informatics services to aid in grant preparation and study feasibility assessment are offered, on a limited basis, at no cost to faculty researchers at eligible Tufts Medicine institutions:

  • Consultations include:
    • The full range of informatics resources to support research projects.
    • Limited assistance with the informatics components of research protocols.
  • Cohort discovery includes:
    • An overview of data available in the TRDW; Medical Record Numbers (MRNs) for patients in a cohort can be provided with the appropriate IRB approvals.
    • Exploration of research variables with cohort-level summary count.
    • Guidance regarding reuse of previously validated concept sets, operationalized study variables, and cohort definitions.
    • Cost estimates for cohort refinement and study variable operationalization.

Eligible researchers may access one block of up to three hours of free services per project to support development of a research study that will be submitted for grant funding. On a limited basis eligible researchers may also access query data to explore feasibility of a research concept at no cost.

Study Support (Post-Award) Services

The following Informatics services are offered on a fee-for-service basis to researchers at eligible Tufts Medicine institutions with IRB approvals as required:

  • Cohort discovery and variable category elaboration – includes extensive queries and exploration of data not currently in the TRDW.
  • Recruitment support – contact information for eligible participants for targeted recruitment.
  • Chart abstraction – includes:
    • patient-level standard reports – simple summary reports and links to historical patient charts not available within Epic.
    • study variable operationalization – services to locate, correlate, and summarize clinical records into variables supporting defined research needs.
  • Custom development – for example, Natural Language Processing (NLP) specific to your research project, linkage to external datasets and research registries, image and wave form data collection and processing, and geospatial data linkage and visualization.
  • Data exports – de-identified, limited, and full datasets of clinical records for teams conducting their own study variable operationalization.

Following initial service request intake, the Informatics team will provide a quote including the scope of work, a time estimate, and costs for all study support services.

Primary TRDW Sources

The TRDW includes:

  • Tufts Medical Center EHR data prior to April 1, 2022
  • Tufts Medicine (Tufts Medical Center, MelroseWakefield Healthcare, Lowell General Hospital) EHR data entered after April 1, 2022
  • Tufts Medicine EHR data from the Tufts Medicine Integrated Network associated outpatient private practices excluding financial data

NOTE: Data requests that span April 1, 2022 may require querying multiple data sources due to a change in the EHR on that date.  This may require additional effort to normalize and merge data sets.

Eligibility

Researchers at Tufts Medicine hospitals (Tufts Medical Center, MelroseWakefield Healthcare, and Lowell General Hospital) are eligible for TRDW Informatics data services.

Student, Resident, and Fellow projects are not eligible for free services, except for those engaged in faculty-led research programs which may receive free consultations if the Principal Investigator (PI) is a faculty member at an eligible Tufts Medicine institution and the faculty member participates in the consultation. Students, Residents, and Fellows may access Tufts CTSI fee-based services provided a faculty collaborator at a Tufts Medicine hospital is an investigator on the project.

To Initiate a Consultation

To request support or use of our resources, please submit a service request.

Tips for an efficient start to your data project

If you plan on collecting data for the purpose of human subjects research, your project must be reviewed and approved by your IRB:

  • Please follow IRB guidelines and forms and obtain necessary approvals or waivers.
  • IRB approvals are not required to obtain de-identified cohort counts for assessing feasibility of a study.
  • IRB approvals are required for any requests involving receipt of data, e.g., contact information, de-identified or limited dataset. Please have the approvals available when requesting services. Please see the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) definition of de-identified data at the Tufts IRB website.
  • If you are a Tufts MC investigator and plan to share data outside of Tufts MC, please contact Research Administration for guidance. A Data Use Agreement (DUA), will be requited to share data with non-Tufts Medicine collaborators.
  • You must have an established HIPAA-compliant system or have secure access to a HIPAA-compliant system to store extracted data.

Tufts CTSI does not provide data storage for any exported datasets. You must have a plan to transfer and store any exported report or data, and ensure the system meets the HIPAA requirements. If you need assistance for storing large datasets we will be glad to refer you to appropriate resources.

Tufts CTSI Informatics Voucher Program

To support innovative and promising clinical and translational research projects that would benefit from informatics services, but have no or limited research funds, Tufts CTSI is pleased to offer a limited number of informatics service vouchers. More information can be found on the Informatics Voucher Program webpage.

Contact

Have questions? Please email informatics@tuftsctsi.org and we will be happy to assist you.

Clark Evans, Co-Director, Informatics

William Harvey, MD, MSc, FACR, Co-Director, Informatics

Andrew Williams, PhD, Co-Director, Informatics

Svetlana Rojevsky, MSc, Program Administrative Director, Informatics