Overview
The ICTR Health informatics Core (HIC) provides accessible and comprehensive informatics resources, services, and training for supporting and accelerating clinical and translational research in an increasingly data intensive, connected, and collaborative environment. The HIC participates in major research consortia and national networks, and actively contributes to open-source application development to advance open science and share informatics innovations. HIC harnesses joint investments of Montefiore and Einstein in the Center for Health Data Innovations (CHDI) that provides multidisciplinary personnel and infrastructure to strategically integrate research informatics with clinical and care coordination practices, patient experience, and population health management.
Health Informatic Core Services
The HIC provides clinical and translational researchers at Einstein and Montefiore with a wide range of informatics services including:
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Cohort Discovery /Electronic Health Record (EHR) Data Resources
- Access and retrieval of EHR data for cohort studies, clinical trials, and quality improvement
- Data coordination and management for clinical trials and network research
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Clinical Decision Support
- Implementation science, quality improvement, and comparative effectiveness research
- Departmental systems and support services for clinical research and advanced analytics
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Data Management and Clinical Trials Support
- Data collection and management, surveys, electronic consent (eConsent) using REDCap
- Patient screening, low/high touch consenting, clinical trial recruitment services via TwillioTM
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Artificial Intelligence
- Machine learning, and predictive modeling
- Natural language processing, clinical text understanding
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Grant Support
- Informatics and data science methods, resources, and facilities for grant applications
Consultations
Submit a request here.
If you are unsure of which resources to request or need more information, schedule a consultation by contacting us at HIC-help@einsteinmed.edu.
Cohort Discovery
ATLAS allows Einstein and Montefiore researchers to create and analyze cohorts using clinical data from the Epic EHR system in a self-service manner, free of charge. Users can also upload existing cohorts to ATLAS to perform cohort analytics or participate in multi-institutional cohort collaboratives in a secure and HIPAA compliant manner.
ATLAS Self-Service functions:
- Cohort definition and computable phenotype queries
- Customizable analysis ready data extraction for data science and statistical analysis
- Incident rates analysis
- Data quality assessments
REQUEST SERVICES HERE
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Data Management Services
- Custom cohort data extraction
- Data management and quality assessment pipelines
- Advanced informatics and analytics support (natural language processing, computable phenotyping, data harmonization and transformation, terminology services)
- Data access and extraction from ECGs, MRIs, other imaging modalities, etc.
- Integration of multimodal data sets including -omics and social determinants of health data with clinical data from Montefiore EHR
REQUEST SERVICES HERE
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Data Consortia and Multi-institutional Network
Einstein and Montefiore participate in data and knowledge exchange collaborations. Research networks provide opportunities for research collaboration, access to high quality research datasets, and participation in scientific and methodological working groups:
- INSIGHT Clinical Research Network
The INSIGHT Clinical Research Network is supported by Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to create an accessible, sustainable, scalable clinical data network to facilitate patient-centered research, learning healthcare systems, and PCORnet, a national research network. INSIGHT Network brings together Albert Einstein School of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine/New York-Presbyterian Hospital, lcahn School of Medicine/Mount Sinai Health System, and New York University School of Medicine/Langone Medical Center. The central data repository enables researchers to perform data queries on >15 million unique patients and offers access to 11 years of longitudinal, high-quality, research-ready data.
- National Covid Cohort Collaborative (N3C)
The N3C is a partnership among the NCATS-supported CTSA Program hubs, the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H), and distributed clinical data networks (PCORNet, OHDSI, ACT, TriNetX) with overall stewardship by NCATS. Collaborators contribute and use COVID‑19 clinical data to answer critical research questions to address the pandemic. The secure platform includes data from nearly 6 million cases of COVID-19. Additional information can be found at https://covid.cd2h.org
- Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER)
Funded by the NIH the RECOVER initiative was created to learn about the long-term effects of COVID. The HIC submits Montefiore data to this consortium, which allows researchers to conduct multi-centered research from a larger number of patients. Data includes demographics, visit information, diagnosis information, drugs, vitals, and procedures. Additional information can be found at https://recovercovid.org/
REQUEST SERVICES HERE
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Self-Service Data Collection and eConsent via REDCap
REDCap is a secure web platform for building and managing online databases and surveys. REDCap provides automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to Excel and common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata, R), as well as a built-in project calendar, scheduling module, ad hoc reporting tools, and advanced features, such as branching logic, file uploading, and calculated fields.
- Design and deploy sophisticated data collection instruments (e.g., case report forms, surveys)
- Schedule and coordinate data entry and data collection events
- Data quality controls and monitoring
- Collaborate and participate in multi-institutional data collection and exchange projects in a secure and HIPAA compliant manner
- Send secure and context appropriate messages and communications via text, voice, and email messages (TwilioTM Service)
- Electronic consent (eConsent) is a platform for consenting research participants using a computer-based consent form in lieu of traditional paper documentation
REQUEST SERVICES HERE
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Clinical Trial Recruitment Services via TwillioTM
This service allows construction of culturally sensitive messages to be automatically scheduled and communicated with research participants, in a secure and HIPAA compliant environment, after authorization to contact and recruit patients for research is obtained from providers. The service coordinates between patient’s clinical appointments, eligibility and recruitment protocols, low/high touch recruitment strategies, and provides just-in-time information for research coordinators to effectively communicate, consent and recruit participants to clinical studies via efficient use of text, voice, and email messages.
- Eligibility screening for recruitment via computable phenotyping
- Automated communication with primary care provider (PCP) to obtain permission to contact patients for recruitment
- Appointment matching through Epic Integration to identify PCP and clinical appointments
- Low/high touch contacting using TwillioTM secured messaging (text, voice, emails messages)
- E-consenting and recruitment services via REDCap integration
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REDCap eConsent
eConsent for research at Einstein-Montefiore is available using REDCap. You can use REDCap to conduct and record consent for remote participants, or for participants in clinic on tablets or other touchscreen devices. Study teams can add relevant photos, videos, or other media to facilitate participant understanding of study-related procedures. Participants can sign the consent form electronically and submit it to the study team. Once the consent form is submitted, the participant receives an email that includes a PDF attachment with a copy of their signed consent form. The IRB will review the use of eConsent on a study- by- study basis to ensure the informed consent process is appropriate for the study population, level of risk, and protocol.
REQUEST SERVICES HERE
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Velos
The Velos Clinical Trial Management System streamlines, integrates, and manages all clinical research activities at Einstein-Montefiore. The system ensures regulatory compliance, improves quality of data, and streamlines administrative and financial management of the studies, sponsors, and patients by providing comprehensive protocol management, patient recruitment, coordination and calendaring, regulatory reporting, adverse event management and reporting, quality assurance reporting, and consolidated invoicing and financial management.
User access can be requested after training is completed. Click here for more information on training.
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Informatics Training Videos
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Research Informatics Pricing Model
All requests for services from the ICTR-Health Informatics Core (HIC) will be subject to the following pricing policies:
- Development of Grants and Contracts: HIC does not charge for informatics expertise and support on the development and writing of grant applications. This includes informatics and data science consultations, assistance with description of available infrastructure and resources, analytic plans, and budgetary planning for informatics needs. However, HIC expects to be included as a collaborator in these applications and the grant budget should allow for continued post-award informatics support and effort.
- ICTR Sponsored Studies: Informatics support on projects and cores sponsored by the Einstein-Montefiore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (e.g., Fellowships, Pilot Projects, Training Programs) is offered free-of-charge.
- Self-Service Research Informatics Support: Access and Self-service use of research informatics platforms (REDCap, ATLAS cohort extraction, ElasTEX NLP Services) are free-of-charge to all users. However, we charge a $1000 initiation fee for each project utilizing REDCap service. Projects are defined by an IRB number. Departments may bulk buy REDCap project licenses for distribution to individual PIs within their department.
- Clinical research networks: Data retrieval from clinical research networks (INSIGHT, CRN, N3C, RECOVER) is offered free-of-charge.
- Other informatics support: This may include but is not limited to custom research informatics and data science services such as:
- Advanced data management services, including imaging and non-traditional datasets
- EMR cohort extraction, and computable phenotypes
- Patient screening and trial recruitment
- Natural Language Processing
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Real-time analytics and clinical decision support
- Software and application development (e.g., mobile health apps)
These will be charged on a fee-for-service basis ($150/hour) unless the project is sponsored by a department or institutional leadership. Investigators should inquire in their departments whether there is an existing agreement with HIC that can be used to support the project. Sponsored projects are required to submit a letter of support from the relevant sponsor (e.g., department chair, Assoc. Dean) that indicates approval of the expenses, scope, and prioritization of the project.
Leadership
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![Parsa Mirhaji, M.D., Ph.D.]()
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![Tim Q. Duong, Ph.D.]()
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![Selvin Soby]()
Selvin Soby, Pharm.D.
Director, Informatics & Health Data Analytics