Real World Data & EHR Core
Our Mission & Vision
Real-world data and electronic health record (EHR) data inform translation science and can transform clinical research and health innovation. Large-scale, longitudinal EHR datasets can reveal real-time disease patterns and reflect the complexity of health care delivery and outcomes in real-world settings. Demand for real world data is rapidly growing in medicine, policy, and public health, and our overarching goal is to help position DoM investigators as national leaders in real-world data research.
Core Leadership
How the EHR Core Supports You Across Data Resources
The EHR Core helps investigators navigate complex EHR data and access environments. We provide end-to-end services from cohort creation, processing of raw clinical data, statistical consultation, running of analysis, presentation/writing up/documentation of results and manuscript review for publications.
Below are the EHR resources available to UCLA investigators, and examples of services we offer, once data access is approved.
CTSI Biomedical Informatics–Provisioned Data
CTSI Biomedical Informatics provisions curated datasets based on investigator requests. Approved data are typically delivered as CSV files and placed in the Unified Learning Environment for Analytics & Data (ULEAD).
How the EHR core helps
- Advise on cohort creation and selection of data necessary for research study
- Review of data extraction template (DET)
- Data cleaning, harmonization, and restructuring
- Exploratory data analysis and quality checks
- Study design and statistical analysis planning
- Advanced modeling and sensitivity analyses with SAS, R and Python.
- Figure and table creation
- Support for grant proposals and manuscript writing
This pathway is ideal for investigators who want to focus on analysis and interpretation rather than data extraction, and who are interested in only using data from UCLA’s EHR system.
OHIA Discovery Data Repository (DDR)
OHIA DDR consists of UCLA Health clinical data accessed through the Office of Health Informatics and Analytics (OHIA). These data are analyzed within xDR, OHIA’s enterprise data and analytics platform, which integrates multiple EHR data sources and analytic tools in secure on-premises and cloud environments.
How the EHR core helps
- SQL-based data pulls
- Cohort definition and variable construction using UCLA Health EHR data
- Data cleaning, validation, and clinical quality checks
- Creation of analysis-ready datasets within xDR
- Statistical analysis, modeling, and visualization
- Support for manuscripts and grants writing
This support is particularly valuable for UCLA Health–specific clinical studies.
UC Data Discovery Platform (DDP)
The UC Data Discovery Platform provides de-identified, HIPAA-limited clinical data across multiple UC Health systems. Data are harmonized to the OMOP Common Data Model and hosted in a Databricks/Spark environment, enabling scalable, cross-site research.
How the EHR core helps
- OMOP concept mapping (ICD-9/10, CPT, LOINC, RxNorm → standard concepts)
- Cohort definition and phenotyping across UC sites
- Spark SQL–based data provisioning in Databricks
- Data processing and variable creation
- Statistical analysis and modeling with Python (PySpark) and R (with Spark connectors).
- Figure and table generation
- Support for manuscripts and grants writing
This support is particularly valuable for multi-site studies, population health analyses, and comparative effectiveness research where data from multiple UC healthcare systems is needed.
VA Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW)
The CDW contains identifiable patient-level health data from the Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States. We have a cadre of DOMStat faculty and staff who are WOC-approved (Without Compensation) and have access to VA data.
How the EHR core helps
- Cohort definition and variable construction
- SQL-based data pulls
- Data cleaning, validation, and clinical quality checks
- Creation of analysis-ready datasets
- Statistical analysis, modeling, and visualization
- Figure and table generation for manuscripts and grants
