title: Federated Aggregate Cohort Estimator (FACE): an easy to deploy, vendor neutral, multi-institutional cohort query architecture.
abstract: Cross-institutional data sharing for cohort discovery is critical to enabling future research. While particularly useful in rare diseases, the ability to target enrollment and to determine if an institution has a sufficient number of patients is valuable in all research, particularly in the initiation of projects and collaborations. An optimal technology solution would work with any source database with minimal resource investment for deployment and would meet all necessary security and confidentiality requirements of participating organizations. We describe a platform-neutral reference implementation to meet these requirements: the Federated Aggregate Cohort Estimator (FACE). FACE was developed and implemented through a collaboration of The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), The Ohio State University (OSU), the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), and the Denver Health and Hospital Authority (DHHA) a clinical affiliate of the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. The reference implementation of FACE federated diverse SQL data sources and an i2b2 instance to estimate combined research subject availability from three institutions. It used easily-deployed virtual machines and addressed privacy and security concerns for data sharing.
authors: Biomedical Informatics, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Suit 175 Sparks Building, 1720 7th Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35233, United States. Electronic address: mwyatt@uabmc.edu.
authors: Matthew C
authors: MC
authors: Wyatt
authors: Biomedical Informatics, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Suit 175 Sparks Building, 1720 7th Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35233, United States.
authors: R Curtis
authors: RC
authors: Hendrickson
authors: University of Colorado Cancer Center, 13001 E. 17th Place, Aurora, CO 80045, United States.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Ames
authors: University of Colorado Cancer Center, 13001 E. 17th Place, Aurora, CO 80045, United States.
authors: Jessica
authors: J
authors: Bondy
authors: Research Computing Services, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655-0002, United States.
authors: Paul
authors: P
authors: Ranauro
authors: Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, AS8-1063, 368 Plantation Street, Worcester, MA 01605, United States.
authors: Thomas M
authors: TM
authors: English
authors: Biomedical Informatics, Center for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Suit 175 Sparks Building, 1720 7th Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35233, United States.
authors: Keith
authors: K
authors: Bobitt
authors: Denver Public Health, Denver Health, 605 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80204, United States.
authors: Arthur
authors: A
authors: Davidson
authors: Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655-0002, United States.
authors: Thomas K
authors: TK
authors: Houston
authors: Department of Biomedical Informatics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, 3190 Graves Hall, 333 W. Tenth Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, United States.
authors: Peter J
authors: PJ
authors: Embi
authors: Health Informatics Program, Department of Health Services Administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1705 University Blvd #590J, Birmingham, AL 35294-1212, United States.
authors: Eta S
authors: ES
authors: Berner
mesh_terms: D016494:Computer Security; D003219:Confidentiality; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D008490:Medical Informatics; D014584:User-Computer Interface
keywords: Cohort discovery; Data sharing; Federated query; Grid architecture; TRIAD; i2b2