Title: Unlocking value in clinical research network data

Authors: Deborah Beranek Lafky

Addresses: Epidemiology Division, Department of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, 224 Irvine Hall, Irvine CA 92697-7555, USA

Abstract: The US National Institutes of Health Roadmap outlines a vision for reaping value from clinical research; increasing the speed and effectiveness of applying that research to healthcare practice. The Institutes| call for reengineering the clinical healthcare enterprise articulates the need for informatics as the key facilitator for increasing the productivity and efficiency of research networks. Data heterogeneity among clinical research network nodes is an impediment to achieving this goal of knowledge integration in the distributed research enterprise. Existing research networks display a broad diversity of informatics implementations among their nodes. This paper presents a framework for understanding the source and nature of data heterogeneity in the research enterprise and presents a prototype method for overcoming one facet of it. By providing a strategy for marshalling the research enterprise|s emergent knowledge, the goal of managing that knowledge and applying it to clinical care can be more rapidly and easily achieved.

Keywords: clinical research network; common data element; data heterogeneity; data standardisation; healthcare enterprise value; knowledge management; metadata; medical informatics; knowledge integration; clinical care; collaboration; knowledge capture; data management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2005.007006

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2005 Vol.6 No.4/5/6, pp.381 - 396

Published online: 02 May 2005 *

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