The Unified Research data Sharing and Access (URSA) Initiative was launched in 2015 with the overall goal of making electronic health data accessible and usable for research purposes across Rhode Island. This initiative is supported by Advance-CTR and coordinated by the Advance-CTR Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, and Cyberinfrastructure Enhancement (BIBCE) Core with leadership and expertise provided by the Brown Center for Biomedical Informatics (BCBI). 

The Advance-CTR BIBCE Core is working together with information services, compliance, legal, and research offices at Brown University and health data partners across Rhode Island to:

• Coordinate processes for health data sharing and secure access within and across institutions
• Develop the requisite legal, ethical, and technical infrastructure between Brown and health data sharing partners
• Establish cross-institutional governance, including standard policies, procedures, and protocols for appropriate sharing and use of health data
• Provide documentation and training for health data requests, access, and use

Through the URSA Initiative, the Advance-CTR BIBCE Core provides expertise and infrastructure for accessing and using large-scale datasets for health-related research. The Advance-CTR BIBCE Core is available to help researchers navigate the process of identifying options and solutions for storing, managing, and analyzing data from health data partners or other data sources. This includes coordination with health data partners for data from:

• CurrentCare Health Information Exchange (HIE) operated by the Rhode Island Quality Institute  
• Rhode Island’s All Payer Claims Database (APCD) from the Rhode Island Department of Health  
• Electronic Health Record (EHR) Systems at Care New England (Cerner and Epic) and Lifespan (Epic)

The Advance-CTR BIBCE Core guides researchers through various processes associated with obtaining aggregate statistics or datasets (e.g., de-identified or limited) including those for data requests, IRB protocols, data use agreements (DUA), and data management and sharing plans (DMSP). The Advance-CTR BIBCE Core also guides researchers in choosing and using the appropriate computing environments, database management systems, established health data standards, and analytic tools to conduct their research.

Brown University provides several computing services that can be used for storage and analysis of electronic health data.

Stronghold is “a secure computing and storage environment that enables Brown researchers to analyze sensitive data while complying with regulatory or contractual requirements. It has been established by Brown University to be compatible with Federal and Rhode Island Law standards for data privacy and protection.”

Oscar is the “primary research computing cluster, [and] consists of more than 300 multi-core nodes sharing a high-performance interconnect and file system.”

Brown’s Data Risk Classifications can be used in “determining who is allowed to access the information and what security precautions must be taken to protect it against unauthorized access.”

A core component of the URSA Initiative is Stronghold, the secure computing environment at Brown for storing and analyzing sensitive data that includes protected health information (PHI) designated as Brown Risk Level 3.  Within the URSA tenant in Stronghold (“URSA Stronghold”), there are user workstations (Linux and Windows), database management systems (e.g., MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and PostgreSQL), and a range of software for supporting analysis of electronic health data (e.g., Julia, Python, R, and SAS). 

In addition to URSA Stronghold, researchers can leverage the Oscar computing environment for analysis of de-identified health datasets designated as Brown Risk Level 2 with the requisite approvals. In some cases, a health data partner may require use of Stronghold for Risk Level 2 data given its security protections. 

Request an Advance-CTR URSA Consultation. Select “Informatics and Implementation Science Services” and then “General Informatics Consult.”

Schedule a Consultation