About Accessing the Secondary Data Core
The Secondary Data Core (SDC) is a shared resource for The Ohio State University researchers that stores and synthesizes large-scale clinical datasets on an analytic platform. Through the SDC, researchers can use data such as Truven Marketscan, the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Claims, or they can request to add their own data to the SDC. SDC enables continuous, systematic analysis and interpretation of health-related data and connected datasets.
Why would you need to access the secondary data core?
Cross-dataset discovery
Data within the SDC is presented to users in formats that follow common ontologies. Using ontology matching, the SDC uses common data elements across datasets to facilitate cross-dataset discovery. This allows researchers to ask their analytic question of many datasets via a single operation rather than having to obtain and prepare each dataset they wish to analyze.
Multi-year, continuously updated datasets
Data in the SDC is standardized across multiple years or waves of the same data source. As new data become available, users' working datasets are automatically updated and stored analyses are automatically executed on the new data.
FAQs
The SDC includes the following datasets:
- HCUP from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: admission-level data about hospital admissions, readmissions, and emergency department use.
- CMS claims data: claims-level data about all claims filed through Medicare.
- American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey (AHAAS) with Information Technology supplement (AHAIT): annualized survey about hospital demographics.
- Health Information National Trends Survey from the National Cancer Institute: person-level survey that asks people general thoughts on cancer and cancer-related topics.
- Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) PCORNET: patient EHR data along with PCORI studies in a unified data model.
- Epic Systems’ Cosmos: patient EHR data
- IBM’s Truven: a set of clinical datasets of which one is a patient EHR dataset
College of Medicine Research Information Technology can assist researchers wishing to add their own data to the SDC. Contact RIT to learn more.
Because the SDC represents a partnership between RIT and CTSI, researchers using the SDC should follow the CTSI acknowledgement guidelines.