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Our researchers examine data generated from billions of healthcare encounters, insurance claims, and surveys that can reveal rich information about health across the lifespan. They also analyze healthcare laws, guidelines, and other policies to determine what’s working, what’s not, and what could be improved.

The mammoth amounts of data available in our digital age provide important insights for researchers like ours who study how healthcare works and how it can be made better. But these data are complex and often expensive to acquire, with stringent requirements for data security and privacy protections. IHPI’s Data & Methods Hub (DMH) has successfully addressed many of these challenges for researchers at IHPI and throughout U-M, by:

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Reducing barriers to data access

IHPI has enabled cost-effective, secure access to healthcare data resources through centralized contracting and partnerships with other campus data groups, and by offering specialized analytic support. Launched in 2015 as one of IHPI’s original core services for members, the DMH helps researchers hit the ground running with their projects, boosting their efficiency, effectiveness and productivity while reducing expenses university-wide. The DMH’s success has come in large part through fostering a “culture of sharing” of data and analytic resources among investigators, and by removing significant administrative and financial obstacles to allow researchers to focus on their science.

Expanding data resources

Over the years, the DMH has facilitated the steady expansion of large administrative healthcare claims data from both public and private sources, made possible in part through data contributed from other U-M groups and investigators within IHPI. This collection represents a high-value data resource that is shared widely across IHPI. This strategy permits student and faculty researchers at all stages of their careers to access health data that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Each dataset provides its own unique and valuable insights on the healthcare journey of millions of U.S. patients, while linkages to clinically derived and population health data features—such as socioeconomic measures, mortality rates, geographic location, prescription drug use, and laboratory results—add to a more complete understanding of healthcare and outcomes at a national level.

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Supporting secure cloud computing 

IHPI has also actively supported the development of a university-wide secure cloud computing platform since 2016. This platform provides all researchers at U-M with free access to a secure, flexible, on-demand computing environment that allows a more efficient way to store, analyze, and process data. Because it enables the analysis of sensitive datasets restricted by federal privacy laws, proprietary access agreements, or confidentiality requirements, this platform offers a particularly important resource for healthcare researchers.

 

IHPI’s expertise in healthcare datasets and the methods to analyze them ensure we can help researchers understand these resources and maximize their use. We do this through individual methods consults with investigators, and by providing analyst support to faculty across IHPI. And by offering educational opportunities and networking platforms, we have also helped cultivate a large and growing community of healthcare data analysts, who share knowledge, skills, statistical code and—perhaps most importantly—a sense of camaraderie.