42 - Evaluating a Pilot Program to Support Secondary Use of EHR Data at an Academic Medical Center

Background: Electronic health records (EHR) present research opportunities for investigators and evaluation on the research uses of EHR data can be used to inform the creation of services and technologies to support access and use of EHR data. Following up on a previous project to improve the discoverability of EHR data, the NYU Health Sciences Library (NYU HSL) and DataCore, a clinical research data management unit, collaborated to assess research use of EHR data. DataCore provides an EHR data extraction service to researchers at the institution while NYU HSL maintains a data catalog which describes datasets generated at the institution. Evaluation included the following primary objectives: to understand the use of EHR data by researchers, to generate use cases to improve current EHR data cataloging practices, and to identify next steps for the collaboration between the library and DataCore.

Description: Data sources were a REDCap database that tracked EHR data requests processed by DataCore and a faculty bibliography tool which contains bibliographic information associated with members of the institution. Publications and abstracts were matched with data requests based on the following parameters: investigator name, project title, research question or project description, sample population, and timeframe. Investigators who submitted data extraction requests that could not be readily matched to publications were contacted to verify their project statuses. Additional factors that were assessed included intended use of the data extract (i.e., study type) as reported with data requests and actual use (i.e., study type, number of publications or presentations, first publication or presentation date). In total, 167 EHR data requests were evaluated.

Conclusions: At the time of evaluation in June 2021, 60 of the 167 EHR data extracts (35.9%) were used in publications or abstract presentations. A majority of extracts were intended to support retrospective studies (55.7%) or to identify patients for recruitment (29.9%). Other intended uses included education/training or process improvement, feasibility assessment, and machine learning. Researchers from the departments of medicine and radiology were the most frequent requesters of EHR data (25.2% and 13.8%, respectively). Of the extracts which led to research products, 13 (21.7%) were associated with multiple publications or presentations. The average time elapsed between request fulfillment and a researcher’s first presentation or publication was 21 months (range: 3 to 52 months). Next steps include developing plans for long-term assessment to improve the tools and services of the library and DataCore that support secondary use of EHR data.