NEW YORK – The National Institutes of Health said on Thursday that it has awarded $30 million to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and its collaborators to establish the Center for Linkage and Acquisition of Data (CLAD) for the All of Us Research Program.
The initial award period is 18 months, during which the CLAD team is expected to "securely acquire" healthcare claims, mortality data, and initial environmental data based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Environmental Justice Index, NIH said.
The award may be renewed annually for up to four additional years, pending the availability of funds.
According to the NIH, the new center aims to supplement and fill in gaps in existing data types in the Researcher Workbench of the All of Us program, as well as add new data streams that "would make the information provided by participants even more impactful for advancing research on a range of diseases and conditions."
These new data streams would pull from existing datasets and sources without requiring additional action by participants, the agency said.
Additionally, CLAD awardees will explore ways to overcome technical challenges for linking electronic health record data from health information networks for participants who have consented to share this information, while exploring ways to improve data completeness using national health information exchange standards.
Furthermore, CLAD awardees will aim to develop analytical tools to help researchers "jumpstart their analyses" once the data are available within the Researcher Workbench. The center will take a "rigorous approach" to ensuring data privacy, NIH noted.
While the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is the main grant recipient, sub-awardees include Axle Informatics, Datavant, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Medical College of Wisconsin, Ochin, Palantir Technologies, the University of Florida, the University of Iowa, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the University of Washington, and ZeroTrust.