Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research
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University of Nebraska Medical Center
Home — Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research — Research Resources — Cores & Shared Resources — UNMC Cores and Shared Resources — Research, Education, Administration, and Development of Biomedical Informatics Core — Instruments and Services

Instruments and Services

How We Provide Support

  • Research – Support NU faculty, students, and staff in health research initiatives by providing access to and assistance with real-world clinical data and related data sets to advance investigator-driven research efforts including translational research, public health research, implementation science, and clinical care delivery and quality improvement efforts.
  • Education – Provide clinicians, research faculty, students, and staff educational services in health informatics. Provide broad educational services that address literacy, study design, data navigation, and use of electronic health record and other real-world clinical data sets.
  • Administration – Provide a central organization for all health informatics research activities to simplify and improve access to EHR data and other related clinical data sets, provide a single point of entry for health informatics research activities using health data to eliminate confusion amongst clinicians, faculty, students, and staff regarding health informatics research resources and related domains including information technology guidance for health informatics research.
  • Development – Provide the tools and infrastructure necessary to enable clinicians, faculty, students, and staff throughout the University of Nebraska system, Nebraska Medicine, and Children’s Nebraska to pursue health informatics activities in research, clinical care, public health, and education.

The READi core provides access to electronic health record data for clinical and translational research. Data may be requested by any UNMC faculty, Nebraska Medicine staff, or Children’s Nebraska staff.

For UNMC students, if you would like to have the READi Core assist with your project, please ensure you include your faculty advisor information when completing the project intake form, as we can not release data students without an identified advisor falling into one of the above categories.

Getting Started

Anyone wishing to use patient information for a study or publication requires a determination by the IRB as to whether it needs a full IRB review or is considered exempt. If you are unsure, fill out the UNMC IRB's Decision Tool to obtain a determination.

  • If your use case is deemed to be Not Human Subjects Research, please attach the determination to your request (PDF attached to the confirmation email you received when completing the form).
  • If your use case is deemed to be Human Subjects Research, you will need to fill out an IRB application for the proposed study. The submission process can be found on the IRBORA website.

Once your study is IRB approved or determined Not Human Subjects Research, you can submit a request for data using this READi Project Intake Form.

Available Data Sources

Note: Access to and release of data from any of these sources is subject to a review of ethical access, IRB approval, and other factors related to your request.

  • Primary EHR Data Sets
    • Nebraska Medicine electronic health record data
    • Children’s Nebraska electronic health record data
  • Structured Data Sets
    • CRANE De-identified data mart (structured, de-identified subset of the Nebraska Medicine and Children’s instances of Epic)
    • CRANE Identified data mart (structured, fully identified subset of the Nebraska Medicine instance of Epic)
    • UNMC PCORnet common data model (structured, limited data set approved by the PCORnet Coordinating Center)
  • Other Data Sets
    • Nebraska Hospital Association Data
    • Pediatric Hospital Information System Data

Types of Projects Supported

  • cross-sectional studies
  • health outcomes
  • retrospective data analysis
  • quality improvement projects
  • transfer of datasets to a registry
  • case finding for subject recruitment
  • public health research

Services Available

  • Feasibility Counts*
  • Full data release
  • Recruitment Distribution Lists (including Opt-In)
  • Recruitment messages (including Opt-In)
  • Ongoing study messages
  • Data Dashboards
  • Electronic health records and/or billing data datasets
  • REDCap Project Build
  • REDCap Project Data Import

*Feasibility requests are generally limited data retrieval requests used to ascertain whether sufficient patient or sample populations are available to accomplish the proposed research studies. If you have access to Epic, please try SlicerDicer first and if you still need assistance, please fill out a request form.