Mayo Clinic, Wake Forest Baptist Health join clinical research network

The Mayo Clinic and Wake Forest Baptist Health have become members of a clinical research network designed to facilitate the use of electronic health record data on more than 14 million patients.

The healthcare organizations are the latest to join the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network, founded in 2014 with funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, authorized by Congress to fund research aimed at improving the health of entire populations.

Overall, PCORI invested more than $250 million in the development of the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), whose members map data to the same consistent format or common data model.

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In welcoming the two new member organizations—Mayo Clinic, with locations in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, and Wake Forest Baptist Health, an affiliate of Wake Forest University, located in Winston-Salem, N.C.—the clinical research network will now be called the Stakeholder Technology and Research Clinical Research Network (STAR CRN).

“We’re getting some support from the People-Centered Research Foundation and we have expanded our own clinical research network and renamed ourselves to be the STAR CRN,” said Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Russell Rothman, MD, professor of Medicine, Ingram Professor of Integrative and Population Health, and director of the Vanderbilt Center for Health Services Research.

In addition to the Mayo Clinic and Wake Forest Baptist Health, the STAR CRN partners include Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network, Meharry Medical College, the University of North Carolina, Duke University Medical Center, Health Sciences South Carolina, and Wake Forest School of Medicine.

According to Rothman, the Mayo Clinic in particular will provide “good geographic reach” to the clinical research network, ensuring access to diverse patient populations across the country.

“Our aim is to improve the health of entire populations, and this expansion gives our network a new geographical reach, with electronic health record data on over 14 million patients,” added Rothman. “Together we’re bringing new flexibility, efficiency and power to clinical trials and effectiveness research.”