Re-Engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise

University Of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

The principal aim of this proposal is to enable the development of an electronic infrastructure that facilitates the recruitment of subjects and the performance of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in primary care practices anywhere in the United States, and that promotes the rapid integration of new research findings into primary care. This infrastructure is introduced into practice-based research networks of primary care physicians through the Federation of Practice-Based Research Networks (FPBRN). This new electronic Primary Care Research Network (epCRN) will be developed on the new OGSA platform for very high speed network communication called Internet-2 (for the Grid) and will form the foundation for a revolution in clinical research and in primary care in the United States. The specific technical objectives of the proposal are: 1) To provide a web-portal that will enable primary care practices anywhere in the United States to link with researchers in academic centers or NIH to facilitate recruitment, entry, and follow-up of multidisciplinary randomized controlled trials. 2) To establish a clinic-based registry in primary care using distributed database technology that interfaces with the web portal solution in order to enhance the process of clinical trial recruitment and the translation of research findings into practice. 3) To port a combined solution to open-source Internet-2 (Grid) components that will add functionality including real-time opportunistic identification of subjects by primary care clinics, enhanced communication, decision support, enhanced security, and data warehousing that emphasizes provenance and ontology of data.