Abstract
Background The Virtual Data Warehouse (VDW) is a mechanism for producing comparable data across sites for purposes of proposing and conducting research. It is “virtual” in the sense that the data remain at the local sites; there is no multi-site physical database at a centralized data coordinating center. The core of the VDW is a series of standardized file definitions for content areas and data elements that are commonly required for research studies. Data dictionaries are created for each of the content areas, specifying a common format for each of the files and their respective data elements. Local site programmers map data elements from their HMO’s data systems into file structures with standardized variable attributes. This common structure of the VDW enables a SAS analyst at one site to write one program to extract and/or analyze data at all participating sites.
Methods This poster demonstrates the wide range of data sources used at Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO) to feed information into our local VDW datasets.
Results The KPCO local implementation of the VDW contains detailed medical information on over 1.5 million enrolled KPCO members. This includes 50 million pharmacy dispensings (1992–2011), 44 million unique medical encounters, 80 million diagnoses, and 119 million procedures (1998–2011). Vital signs and lab results for over 75 different lab test types have also been loaded into the VDW format. Enrollment and Demographic files are derived from historical and current membership files; Utilization, Vitals and Lab files are derived from legacy and current EMR and claims systems; the VDW tumor data is sourced from Metriq, a cancer registry internal to KPCO; Death data is sourced from Common Membership, Clarity, Metriq, and State Vital Statistics (since 1998).
Conclusions The VDW at KPCO provides an easily employed unified central repository of data from all available source files. This resource enables the sharing of compatible data in multi-site studies, and also improves programming efficiency, accuracy, and completeness for local single site studies by expending resources to link these legacy systems only once.
