The Great Lakes Practice Transformation Network (GLPTN) is a new network of 12 leading medical centers in 8 states committed to a shared vision of improving healthcare delivery through ongoing learning, adoption of evidence-based practices, and active research dissemination.
The GLPTN builds on strong research programs at each sites, existing community engagement, informatics infrastructures and data warehouses developed through the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) initiative, and strong working relationships between investigators and healthcare system information technology departments. The network brings together a diverse population of 6 million people across 1300 miles covering 7 states with a combined area of 679,159 square miles. The GLPTN tailors each existing EHR research module and patient portal and, where needed, will integrate existing clinical research systems in order to support comparative effectiveness randomized trials within the clinical workflow and to increase robust collection of patient reported outcome measures.
Each site is tasked with implementing a local i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) instance which supports a Common Data Model (CDM) shared across all sites.
An i2b2 ontology database is used to share terminologies used at each site (not including patient data) in order to gain visibility across sites to the number of facts and patients observed for each term. The database is also used to build and share cohort definition queries which can be run on each site’s local i2b2 for feasibility purposes and/or data extraction.
The network supports an overall master data sharing agreement and a Central IRB reciprocal deferral model between all sites.
Data requests for feasibility or data extraction purposes are managed by the Data Request Oversight Committee (DROC) which employs RedCap-based tools for management and tracking.
The network empowers a growing list of clinical trials and research studies.
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