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Appl Clin Inform 2025; 16(02): 362-368
DOI: 10.1055/a-2499-4090
Case Report

The Honest Enterprise Research Broker: Facilitating Ethical, Efficient, and Secure Access to Health Data for Research

Michelle S. Keller
1   Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
2   Division of Informatics, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Pamela Roberts
2   Division of Informatics, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
3   Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
4   Department of Medical Affairs, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Kevin Japardi
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Joseph E. Ebinger
6   Department of Cardiology, Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Tod Davis
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Joshua Pevnick
1   Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
2   Division of Informatics, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Sivathmika Chevvuri
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Hudson Stuck
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Shao-Chi Huang
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Edward Kowalewski
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Ashley Lin
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Andrew Sanapanya
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Alan Tomines
5   Research Data Intelligence, Enterprise Information Systems, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
,
Spencer SooHoo
2   Division of Informatics, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, United States
› Author Affiliations Funding This study was supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (grant no.: UL1TR001881).
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Abstract

Background Health systems generate and store vast amounts of clinical data, requiring structured processes to ensure that secondary use of the data is available to researchers in an efficient, ethical, and secure manner.

Objective We describe a process to provide data to health system researchers at a large, multi-hospital health system that balances efficiency with security and ethics.

Methods The Honest Enterprise Research Broker (HERB) Committee has enacted a systematic process to deliver investigators requesting data, using pre-written SQL code, when possible, to increase efficiency, providing a suite of self-service tools for cohort size estimation, and assessing the security and privacy of data leaving the institution. We evaluated the number of extracts per year, the average time to delivery of the data extract, and user satisfaction with the process.

Results From 2018 to 2023, the HERB Committee completed 487 data extracts. The number of requests increased from 51 in 2018 to 121 in 2023. Even as the number of extracts increased, the number of hours per extract decreased from 12.5 in 2018 to 9 in 2023. User satisfaction surveys found a high degree of satisfaction with the process.

Conclusion Through a process of continuous improvement, the HERB Committee has developed an expedient process to support the research needs of a large academic multi-hospital health system.

Keywords

clinical data access - health system - honest broker

Protection of Human and Animal Subjects

No human subjects were involved in this analysis.


Supplementary Material



Publication History

Received: 28 May 2024

Accepted: 09 December 2024

Article published online:
30 April 2025

© 2025. Thieme. All rights reserved.

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany

 

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