The Cancer Informatics Shared Resource (CISR) is a shared resource of the Abramson Cancer Center dedicated to unlocking the power of electronic health records for clinical and translational research in cancer care.

***We are temporarily pausing new requests due to limited resource capacity. Normal services will resume in November. If you have an urgent request, please reach out to the administrator for clarification***

Background

Electronic phenotyping involves querying electronic health record systems (EHRs) and other clinical information systems and databases to identify patients who meet a specific set of clinical characteristics. It can be used to support a variety of clinical and translational research pursuits, such as hypothesis generation, retrospective data gathering and hypothesis testing, research planning and grant preparation, subject recruitment for prospective clinical trials, and development of prospective research registries. 

CISR provides consultative and technical services that leverage the oncology informatics team's deep expertise in clinical research informatics, intimate knowledge of the clinical information systems and workflows in use throughout the Penn Medicine Cancer Service Line, and unique and powerful "real world" data assets, including:

1. The Oncology Research and Quality Improvement Datamart (ORQID) – a data warehouse that aggregates together structured data extracted from PennChart (Penn's instance of the Epic EHR), the Penn Medicine Cancer Registry (accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer), the ARIA® Radiation Oncology Information System, the Penn Center for Personalized Diagnostics genomic variant database, and several other clinical systems
2. Disease-specific, human-curated research datasets developed in partnership with Flatiron Health, Inc.

Overview of Services

Consultative Services:

• Determination of aggregate patient population statistics for grant preparation, sample size estimates, power calculations, etc.
• Advice regarding project feasibility, study design, or data management plan (including privacy and security considerations)
• Advice regarding other resources and services offered through the Department of Information Services, the Institute for Biomedical Informatics, etc.
• Training on EPR-developed self-service tools (e.g. the ACC Catchment Explorer)

Fee Structure:

• Population statistics and general project advice provided free of charge up to 1 hour maximum per project
• More extensive or ongoing consultative needs handled by custom quote or negotiated salary support for CISR staff (capacity permitting)

Technical Services:

• Retrospective cohort identification and data extraction
• Development of prospective registry solutions using the REDCap system
• Provisioning of access to Penn-Flatiron real world data sets (Penn cohort data only; if interested in Flatiron national data sets, contact the EPR team for more information)
• Assistance with design/development of EHR-based research solutions (in partnership with Information Services), e.g.:
• Prospective cohort identification solutions for screening and subject recruitment for clinical trials
• Decision support alerts and other "nudge" interventions
• Structured documentation templates for research data capture

Fee Structure:

• Basic or simplified project (<2 hours): $150 flat project fee
  
• All other projects will be billed in 5-hour increments, starting at a minimum project charge of 5 hours: $750
• Very high complexity or extended duration projects will be handled by custom quote or negotiated salary support for CISR staff (capacity permitting)

Please sign in (or register for an account) and visit the "Submit a Research Data Service Request" tab to initiate a service request.

Research Resource Identifier (RRID)

Our RRID is RRID:SCR_022715.  Please cite us using this identifier when publishing your results.

Leadership

Contacts