The overall aim of our CCCR is to develop and provide scientifically rigorous, state-of-the-art methods and resources for conducting musculoskeletal clinical research, thereby expanding the community of investigators performing high-quality musculoskeletal clinical research and thus increasing the amount of available useful data for researchers, clinicians, patients and policy makers. Over the past decade, health care systems having become increasingly integrated and use electronic health record systems that are collecting and archiving comprehensive and complex sets of data on large populations. While the potential for using such ?big data? to address a wide range of health-related questions is enormous, there are substantial obstacles that prevent researchers from accessing and analyzing routine clinical data. Through multiple projects focused on musculoskeletal conditions and funded by a variety of entities (NIH, AHRQ and PCORI), our group at the University of Washington (UW) has accumulated extensive experience and expertise performing large, clinical, effectiveness trials and transforming routine clinical data into research-ready data. We have both developed methods and also have accumulated a sizeable amount of cleaned and analyzable data. Because of our expertise and resources, we believe that we are well-positioned to propose a UW Core Center for Clinical Research (CCCR) in Musculoskeletal Diseases. Our UW CCCR Specific Aims are: 1) Establish a Methodologic Core that will improve methods for clinical musculoskeletal studies that use rigorous and novel study designs, pragmatic/effectiveness clinical trial, and electronic medical records (EMRs); 2) Establish a Resource Core that will provide analysis-ready data sets and services for conducting clinical musculoskeletal research; and 3) Establish an Administrative Core that will provide overall leadership for the CCCR, manage the financial aspects of the CCCR so that it is a sustainable entity, provide communication and outreach to musculoskeletal researchers and evaluate the success of our efforts. By achieving these aims, we will improve access to expertise and research-quality data, we will improve analytics by developing methods and pipelines for the analysis of clinical data, and we will apply and disseminate knowledge regarding the conduct of rigorous clinical trials. By integrating the viewpoints of stakeholders, our CCCR will be able to provide useful research data to health system decision-makers who will apply the results of the research to real-world decisions. By achieving these aims, we will facilitate health care delivery systems becoming true learning health care systems. Finally and perhaps most importantly, we will work with training programs (K12, KL2, R25 and T32) to train the next generation of investigators in the methods and approaches outlined above.
Our Core Center for Clinical Research will improve scientifically rigorous, state-of-the-art methods and provide resources for conducting musculoskeletal clinical research, thereby expanding the community of investigators performing high-quality clinical research. Increasing the availability of useful data for researchers, clinicians, patients and policy makers will facilitate the transformation of traditional health care systems into learning health care systems, thus improving the quality of care and the health of the public.
