Informatics Maturity and Best Practices

Informatics Maturity and Best Practices Infographic

Value and Vision

One of the biggest challenges associated with translational science is identifying where to invest resources for optimal outcomes. Sufficient frameworks to help organizations identify where their gaps and opportunities lie are not always defined. The Informatics Maturity & Best Practices Core identifies and develops best practices and tools (maturity models) that define pathways for achieving successful outcomes with data use and sharing in the field of open science. 

Research Strategy

The mission of the CD2H Informatics Maturity and Best Practices Core is to support development and dissemination of best practices for open science and data within the CTSA hubs and for other organizations pursuing translational science. We aim to expand work accomplished by experts in the CTSA informatics community and research informatics community at large and identify various models of best practice for using, sharing, and re-using health data. Where models are not defined, we engage the CTSA community to help develop and advance such models. We identify how best to facilitate dissemination and adoption of best practices, and create tools to help sites assess, facilitate, and execute Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data principles. This strategy is demonstrated through activities such as:

  • Development and deployment of methods for using maturing models in research informatics
  • Identification and definition of best practices and adoption models across broad topics of need
  • Development of tools for assessing and comparing best practice approaches
  • Creation of a collaborative guidebook for best practices in reusable data
  • Development of an interactive web portal and metadata-authoring web portal for reusable data
  • Collection of data sharing agreements in a library
  • Definition of matrixed dimensions that affect data sharing agreements
  • Development of a data sharing agreement template tool

Community Core Objectives

  1. Determine, define, and disseminate best practices in data use and informatics
  2. Expand work performed by members of the CTSA and research informatics community by identifying maturity and governance best practice models for using, sharing, and re-using health data
  3. Engage the CTSA community to develop and advance new and existing models
  4. Create tools to assist CTSA hubs execute best practices in data and resource dissemination

Presentations and Other Materials

Informatics Maturity & Best Practices Core community meetings occur the 3rd Thursday of the month at 10 am PT/1 pm ET. Contact data2health@gmail.com for meeting invitation. 

Active Projects

Advancing the Application of Maturity Models

A continuation of a Phase II project, this project aims to advance the development and deployment of informatics maturity models and measures for use by CTSA hubs and decision makers.

EHR Enrichment with Environmental and Social and Environmental Determinants of Health (SEDoH)

This community project received support in Phase III as an incubator project, with the goal of further developing requirements and plans for implementation at a later date. As part of this process, CD2H assists in connecting the team members to other communities that have already established work or interest in this area. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) Enrichment project is designed to quantify the number of Environmental and Social and Environmental Determinants of Health (SEDoH) variables successfully integrated into the EHR via fast, healthcare, interoperability resources (FHIR), number of active users, number of publications resulting from the use of the application, and creation of scalable predictive analytic models.

eConsent

The project has the following goals: (1) Create a framework to evaluate and select eConsent tools for academic environments, (2) Apply the framework to 2-3 different types of eConsent Systems (academic, industry and other); (3) include an eConsent selection best practices in the updated version of the CD2H Playbook; (4) Use the project to develop an overall approach for CD2H architecture and design.

Archived Projects

Reusable Data Best Practice Portal

This portal aims to help investigators share their data (or information about their data) using best practices for metadata, identifiers, licensing, and other attributes, with the goal of enabling discovery and reuse.

Data Sharing Governance Pathways

This project provides governance "pathways" documentation to promote collaborative and flexible data sharing for CTSA hubs to expediently allow the safe sharing of electronic health (EHR) data for research.

Maturity Model

This project aimed to develop an approach to help organizations through the process of self-assessing the maturity of key research information technology (IT) capabilities and learn to improve these capabilities.

Core Leads

Boyd Knosp

Boyd Knosp, MS

The University of Iowa
Informatics Maturity & Best Practices Core Community Co-Lead