Kaiser Receives $54M in NIH Grants for EHR Data Mining, Other Research
Kaiser Permanente announced that it has secured about $54 million in NIH grants for an electronic health record data mining project and other medical research initiatives, the San Francisco Business Times reports (Rauber, San Francisco Business Times, 10/12).
The federal economic stimulus package provided the funding for the 22 grants (DerGurahian, Modern Healthcare, 10/12).
EHR Data Mining Project
The largest of the grants allocates $24.8 million for a project designed to examine how genes and the environment influence disease, health and longevity.
For the project, Kaiser will work with the University of California-San Francisco to genotype 100,000 Kaiser members in Northern California. Researchers then will link the genetic information with EHR data and health survey findings.
The researchers also will examine the influence of environmental factors such as air and water quality, access to healthy food and proximity to recreation space.
Officials say the project could help researchers identify genetic factors that cause different medication responses (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 10/12).
In addition, the project could double the number of U.S. residents available for genome-wide association studies, according to the researchers.
Other Health IT Projects
Kaiser’s NIH grants include additional funding for health IT research, including about:
- $7.2 million to develop a cardiovascular surveillance system for a coalition of 14 health plans;
- $3.4 million to create a National Research Database to organize Kaiser’s EHRs;
- $1 million for an EHR project designed to measure rehabilitation outcomes for stroke patients;
- $1 million to establish a Kaiser Permanente Autoimmune Disease Registry; and
- $100,000 to examine how natural language processing can help extract EHR data (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 10/12).
Above article published on http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2009/10/13/kaiser-receives-54m-in-nih-grants-for-ehr-data-mining-other-research.aspx
Filed under: EHR, Electronic Health Records, Health Care on October 20th, 2009
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