Research Data Overview

MUSC Data Sources

  • Epic
  • MUSC Data Warehouse
  • Research Data Warehouse (RDW)

Epic

Epic is MUSC’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that captures real-time data from Inpatient and Ambulatory patients. The Ambulatory EHR went live at MUSC in May 2012. The Inpatient EHR was introduced at MUSC in July 2014. Epic supports cohort discovery for research via:

  • SliceDicer for self-service de-identified query access
  • Workbench Reporting

Workbench Reports require BMIC Honest Broker services which can be scheduled in SPARC Request (select Research Data Request).

Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)

*Only available for paid requests needing data prior to May 2012*

MUSC and MUHA have established an Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to support their needs in clinical, organizational, and research initiatives. The EDW includes all historical medical records, data from Epic, as well as surrounding systems used at MUSC.

The Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) is the clinical component of the EDW. The CDW is used to support longitudinal research. BMIC Honest Brokers query CDW for data requests extracting demographics, visit information, ICD-coded diagnoses, ICD-coded procedures, medications, and laboratory test results collected from 1993 to January 25th, 2020.

Research Data Warehouse (RDW)

The Research Data Warehouse (RDW) is supported and maintained by the Biomedical Informatics Center to support longitudinal research, MUSC i2b2/TriNetX, and several research and quality improvement networks (Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC), PCORnet Common Data Model (CDM), Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP), Pediatric Trial Network, NorthShore Neurology Practice Based Research Network, N3C, etc.). The scope of the RDW encompasses the electronic health records (EHR) data from Epic and is enriched by other research data sources. As such the RDW has a deeper and wider scope of data than the MUSC Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) or HSSC data.

RDW Data Coverage

The date range for RDW is 5/17/2012 to present and is updated daily. RDW includes demographics, visit information, ICD diagnoses, ICD and CPT procedures, medications orders and administration, laboratory orders and results, referrals, ICD Problems lists, allergies, immunizations, infections, histories (medical, surgical, social, smoking, pertinent negative medical, pertinent negative surgical), notes, research permission, research study enrollment, obstetrics, vitals, a subset of observations from flow sheet items and smart data elements sourced from Epic, and a subset of census tract driven social determinants of health. Additionally, RDW contains data from the Hollings Cancer Center (HCC) and AxIUM Dental data base registry allowing linking HCC and Dental data with clinical data sourced from EPIC. Users can see the current date range along with patient counts for the domains exposed when “Choosing a Project” using the local MUSC i2b2. More information (other available self-service tools, i2b2 FAQ, how to submit a data request) can be found on the research page. 

Multisite Data

PCORnet and STAR CRN

PCORnet and the STAR Clinical Research Network seek to support multisite, EHR-data driven research by reducing technical and regulatory barriers. BMIC assists MUSC researchers in navigating these networks.  Visit the PCORNet page here.