Geographic Information Systems as Data Sharing Infrastructure for Clinical Data Warehouses

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Geographic Information Systems
• Public Health Research

Background:

• Patient location data is crucial for understanding social determinants of health (SDOH) but is highly regulated due to privacy concerns.
• A gap exists between the sensitivity of patient location data and its utility for research on neighborhood-level health impacts.
• Existing regulations and ethical oversight protect patient privacy and human subjects, creating challenges for data accessibility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe data warehousing solutions for the safe and ethical enhancement of patient location data.
• To enable easier and more secure data sharing for health research.
• To bridge the gap between data sensitivity and research utility for SDOH studies.

Main Methods:

• Deployment of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a data warehousing service.
• Importing and processing of patient addresses within the data warehouse.
• Integration of de-identified demographic data from the United States Census Bureau.

Main Results:

• Processed 1.3 million patient records, adding location-based data facets to the warehouse.
• Enriched the data warehouse with de-identified demographic information corresponding to patient locations.
• Facilitated research into the impact of location-driven SDOH on health outcomes.

Conclusions:

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) support is essential for clinical data warehouses.
• Sharing derived, de-identified patient location data is feasible and highly beneficial for research.
• Utilizing open-source software reduces adoption barriers and costs for deriving contextual data.