Research Informatics Support at OHSU
The Office of the Chief Research Information Officer (CRIO) supports many services related to research informatics. Premier among these is the research data concierge, your guide to research informatics services. If you have a complex request, the data concierge is the place to start. There are a number of other services listed below:
- For usual research data requests, contacting the Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (OCTRI) is your best first step.
- For research computing, the Advanced Computing Center offers computational resources and other data support, including cloud-based contracting.
- The Epic for Research team can help you embed your studies in the electronic health record system at OHSU.
- The CRIO also can help connect you with resources for security and compliance including helping facilitate security reviews.
- Finally, the CRIO acts as a liaison between informatics and computational faculty, other information cores and with external investigators.
Review the options below to get more details.
Research data concierge: Your guide to research informatics
This resource is available to help investigators access and work with research data at OHSU. The research data concierge site has extensive research data resources with more to be added over time from across the institution.
Questions? Reach out! Email researchdata@ohsu.edu
Tools and services for accessing and managing data
Research data concierge
The research data concierge is available to help investigators find resources for accessing and working with research data at OHSU. In addition, the research data concierge can help obtain data from new data sources and can direct investigators to guidelines for working with research data. For more information, please contact researchdata@ohsu.edu or visit the research data concierge site.
Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute navigators
The Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (OCTRI) navigators are available to assist with general clinical and translational research inquiries, including, but not specific to, research data. OCTRI navigators can connect investigators to a wide range of research services. Inquiries could be related to recruitment strategies, study coordination, regulatory questions, collaborations, funding and more.
Epic for Research is managed by the OHSU Information Technology Group. Researchers can use Epic itself for certain research-related activities including:
- Research subject tracking notifications
- Research orders
- General Epic optimization and support for researchers
- Study recruitment
For more information, see the Epic for Research O2 site.
Oregon Clinical and Translational Research Institute (OCTRI) informatics accelerates translational research by providing a full suite of informatics tools for bench-to-bedside, clinical and health care systems research. OCTRI can help you:
- Leverage EHR/Epic data for studies
- Develop software and customized databases for clinical research data collection and management
- Assist researchers with the storage, retrieval, sharing and optimal use of biomedical information, data and knowledge
- Access the Research Data Warehouse, a repository of Epic data from patients and research subjects, which can be used for a broad range of research purposes
- Use the Cohort Discovery tool
Learn more on the OCTRI informatics page.
OHSU has established a formal access point for conducting research with OHSU health affiliates. Affiliate sites have agreed to review and consider research projects at their institutions. Connecting with the affiliate research program is the first step prior to asking an affiliate to engage in a research project.
Visit the affiliate research program O2 page to learn more or email questions toAffiliateResearch@ohsu.edu
The Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC) at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) specializes in generating novel Magnetic Resonance techniques and technologies for the advancement of biomedical research. The AIRC provides:
- MRI Research services
- Data processing specific to MR data
- A computing cluster for MR specific data storage and analysis
Learn more on the AIRC site.
Infrastructure for data storage and security
The Advanced Computing Center is a fee-for-service group that provides services for those with computing needs not met by enterprise IT offerings. ACC services include:
- Consulting
- Tiered research storage solutions
- Secure local and remote collaboration options
- Virtual server environments
- Application hosting and license management/compliance
- Co-location and support for research computing systems
- Secure and public web portals
- A large suite of open-source applications running on a parallel computing cluster and provisioning for private compute clusters that are scaled and configured to meet the needs of individual customers
Visit the Advanced Computing Center site to learn more.
Security review
Security reviews help OHSU vet whether new technologies or software are safe to introduce to its environment. A key part of these reviews is ensuring any new technologies comply with OHSU's information privacy and security policies as well as state and federal regulations, including HIPAA, FISMA and FERPA. A security review must be completed before purchasing any new technology or software for use at OHSU. Read more about OHSU security review.
A security review should be initiated when the procurement process of a new technology or software has started in collaboration with the contracts department. Contact ITG Information Privacy and Security to initiate a security review.
Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for the processing of a security review.
Research integrity compliance
The OHSU Research Integrity Office is charged with protecting and assuring compliance under the laws that govern the rights and welfare of human and animal subjects and the oversight of basic and applied scientific research at OHSU.
Please visit the OHSU Research Integrity Office sitee before conducting research at OHSU.
Analysis support
The OHSU Biostatistics and Design Program facilitates collaboration with investigators on questions of study design and analysis. BDP faculty and staff can help researchers select the most appropriate study design to align with their research questions, provide expertise in a wide variety of traditional and modern statistical methods and support data management and wrangling. BDP services include:
- Advice sessions: Discussion of statistical questions scheduled for approximately one hour, free of charge
- “Triage”: Detailed conversations leading to a recommendation for biostatistics support tailored to research aims, budget and timeline
- Grant preparation: Proposal development, study design, statistical analysis planning, sample size and power analysis
- Protocol development: Statistical analysis planning, review of study instruments or survey implementation, sampling and randomization schemes
- Active research: Analysis of data, including designing an approach, interim analysis, analytic file preparation, design of tables and figures, collaboration on abstracts, posters and manuscripts
Visit the Biostatistics and Design Program site to learn more.
The mission of the Knight Cancer Institute biostatistics shared resource is to provide comprehensive and integrated support to basic, clinical and population-based cancer researchers. The Knight Cancer Institute encourages cancer researchers to consult with the biostatistics shared resource as early as possible and to work with a biostatistician as a collaborator or co-investigator.
Visit biostatistics shared resource O2 page to learn more.
Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics
The Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics group is a collection of teams that works to evaluate the value of the vast amount of data at OHSU. Learn more about this group and its data projects on the Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics Bridge site.
Office of Advanced Analytics
The Office of Advanced Analytics designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that meet OHSU's top analytic needs. This office specializes in assembling ad-hoc teams that include members with key skills to create specific solutions that can be rapidly deployed. Visit the Office of Advanced Analytics Bridge site to engage with OAA services.
Additional institutional and departmental resources
In addition to the Office of the CRIO and the resources outlined above, there are other institutional and departmental informatics resources at OHSU. Review these resources below.
OHSU Computational Biology supports discovery-based, original research projects by providing analytics and resources that assist with locating, processing and analyzing large amounts of data.
Visit the Computational Biology website to learn more.
The Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) provides research, education, and service in the areas of clinical informatics, clinical epidemiology, and bioinformatics/computational biomedicine.
The OHSU University Shared Resources (USR) program provides access to state-of-the-art technology and top-level scientific expertise for several informatics niches.
Visit the USR website to learn more.
Industry and other collaborators
The Office of the CRIO welcomes industry and other collaborators. If you want to engage with OHSU research informatics, please email researchdata@ohsu.edu.