Understanding enterprise data warehouses to support clinical and translational research: impact, sustainability, demand management, and accessibility

Objectives: Healthcare organizations, including Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) hubs funded by the National Institutes of Health, seek to enable secondary use of electronic health record (EHR) data through an enterprise data warehouse for research (EDW4R), but optimal approaches are unknown. In this qualitative study, our goal was to understand EDW4R impact, sustainability, demand management, and accessibility. Materials and Methods: We engaged a convenience sample of informatics leaders from CTSA hubs (n = 21) for semi-structured interviews and completed a directed content analysis of interview transcripts. Results: EDW4R have created institutional capacity for single- and multi-center studies, democratized access to EHR data for investigators from multiple disciplines, and enabled the learning health system. Bibliometrics have been challenging due to investigator non-compliance, but one hub’s requirement to link all study protocols with funding records enabled quantifying an EDW4R’s multi-million dollar impact. Sustainability of EDW4R has relied on multiple funding sources with a general shift away from the CTSA grant toward institutional and industry support. To address EDW4R demand, institutions have expanded staff, used different governance approaches, and provided investigator self-service tools. EDW4R accessibility can benefit from improved tools incorporating user-centered design, increased data literacy among scientists, expansion of informaticians in the workforce, and growth of team science. Discussion: As investigator demand for EDW4R has increased, approaches to tracking impact, ensuring sustainability, and improving accessibility of EDW4R resources have varied. Conclusion: This study adds to understanding of how informatics leaders seek to support investigators using EDW4R across the CTSA consortium and potentially elsewhere.