UC-ReX Initiative Honored with 2015 Sautter Award

Note: The UC Research eXchange (UC ReX) Data Explorer created and managed by members of the UC BRAID consortium (UCSF, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, UCLA), is one of three projects to win a Larry L. Sautter 'Golden Award' at the 2015 UC Computing Services Conference.

"UC ReX has been a first step toward creating data networks and has proven how researchers and IT can work together across institutions to create innovative ways to advance research," stated Douglas Berman, lead for the UC ReX project at UCSF and deputy director of the university's Academic Research Systems (ARS).

"We are only beginning to see projects take advantage of UC-Rex and expect it will improve our ability to support cross-campus research."

To learn about all ten awarded projects, read the UCOP announcement

Read the full announcement below via UC Davis Health Systems

 

UC-ReX Initiative Team honored for accelerating health research

Ten teams representing multiple locations across the University of California won 2015 Larry L. Sautter Awards during ceremonies at the recent UC Computing Services Conference in Riverside. The honors, which included a team from UC Davis Health System, recognized select groups for using information technology to better serve faculty, staff, students and, ultimately, patients.

Sautter Awards, which are sponsored by the UC Information Technology Leadership Council, recognize collaborative innovations in IT that advance the university’s missions of teaching, research, public service and patient care.

For UC Davis, that meant being recognized with the top honor, one of three Sautter Golden awards, for work on the University of California’s Research eXchange (UC-ReX) Data Explorer scanning system. This system-wide online tool organizes de-identified data from 13.6 million patient records across all five UC medical centers, a potential treasure trove of research information about illnesses and treatments.

“Each campus has a clinical data warehouse, which allows researchers to get counts and other statistics derived from the electronic health record systems at their own home campus,” explained Kent Anderson, manager of IT research. “What Data Explorer does is knit this data together so that an investigator at one UC campus can search patient data from all UC Health campuses in a semantically-aligned, secure, HIPAA-compliant manner.“

Initially funded by the UC Office of the President, UC-ReX Data Explorer offers researchers access to data ranging from diagnoses, demographics and lab orders to medications and clinical procedures. Several researchers have already leveraged UC-ReX to launch pilot studies and strengthen grant applications.

“This platform is breathtaking in its scope,” added Nick Anderson, UC Davis’ Cardiff Endowed Professor of Research Informatics. “The collaborative expertise from the UC health campuses at San Diego, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Davis is determined to reduce barriers to biomedical, clinical and translation research. It’ got incredible potential to enhance future inter-institutional collaborations around large-scale population studies and UC-wide quality assessments.“

UC-ReX Data Explorer is part of the University of California’s Biomedical Research Acceleration, Integration, and Development (UC BRAID) project. The five-campus consortium pools data, resources and expertise to harmonize research practices across UC Health and to promote development of new tools like the UC-ReX Data Explorer to improve health-care research and provide better health-care outcomes.