Data Office for Clinical & Translational Research

In the world of research data, quality matters. In addition to technical backgrounds, the team in the UMMS Data Office offers strong clinical backgrounds in patient care, too. Data Office informationists collaborate with analysts to ensure that custom data pulls deliver high-quality results, and they can also answer questions regarding data found in MiChart and Data Direct, the self-serve tool. With a deep knowledge of Michart and Data Direct, Data Office staff are a valuable resource to answer questions like: 

• Are you struggling to identify if and where a variable you need from MiChart is located in DataDirect?
• Do you know what data variable you’re interested in, but are not sure how to find it in MiChart?
• Do the clinical data you need live in more than one place in MiChart and/or DataDirect?
• Is your output from DataDirect different than what you expected (for example, patients are not there or data seems to be missing from your cohort)?

The Data Office team can act as guides and provide answers to questions like these, allowing you to move forward with your research with confidence that you have the data needed to answer your research questions. 

Would you like to meet with a Data Office team member? Create a ticket request.  
 

Institutional, home-grown self-service tools are free of charge and support different types of data needs, depending on your study methods. 

Use DataDirect when you need to define a patient cohort using structured data (such as diagnoses, procedures, dates of surgery, labs, demographics), estimate feasibility, download a dataset, or explore available data elements for patients included in your cohort.

Use EMERSE when you need to search within clinical notes to find detailed information that is not captured in structured data, such as symptoms, clinical context, or physician observations within free text documentation. 

DataDirect helps you identify which patients meet your broad criteria and explore their structured data, while EMERSE helps you understand what is documented about those patients in the clinical notes.   

• Have feedback? Complete our brief Data Office survey if you haven’t already.
• Not sure where to start? Simply use this link to create a ticket request with our office. We are committed to providing tailored training/consultation to support your access to the data you need to be successful in your research objectives. 

The Data Office has supported Michigan Medicine’s participation in several national registries, including the Cerebral Palsy Research Network Registry and the United States Immunodeficiency Network Registry:

• Cerebral Palsy Research Network Registry: https://cprn.org/research/cerebral-palsy-registry/
• United States Immunodeficiency Network Registry: https://usidnet.org/registry-data/

Please reach out to discuss registry opportunities for your patients and find out more about how our team of Data Professionals can assist you (Not sure where to start? Contact the Data Office).

Our services include:

• Collaborating with Michigan Medicine research teams, registry networks, and registry data coordinating centers
• Mapping Michigan Medicine EHR data elements to the PCORnet Common Data Model and registry-defined data elements
• Customizing registry-provided reference scripts to meet Michigan Medicine’s technical and operational needs
• Extracting relevant clinical, molecular, and laboratory data from the EHR according to registry specifications
• De-identifying protected health information, including PHI contained in free-text fields
• Performing data quality reviews to promote data validity, reliability, and completeness
• Validating data outputs to ensure high-quality, standardized data capture
• Securely submitting finalized data to registry data centers to support the development of accessible patient databases and advance research