The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute provides information on cancer statistics. The SEER research data include SEER incidence and population data associated by age, sex, race, year of diagnosis, and geographic areas (including SEER registry and county). SEER research data are released every Spring based on the previous November’s submission of data. Additional datasets are available including: Standard Population Data, U.S. Mortality Data, and U.S. Population Data.

SPARCS is a comprehensive all payer data reporting system, initially created to collect information on discharges from hospitals. SPARCS currently collects patient level detail on patient characteristics, diagnoses and treatments, services, and charges for each hospital inpatient stay and outpatient (ambulatory surgery, emergency department, and outpatient services) visit; and each ambulatory surgery and outpatient services visit to a hospital extension clinic and diagnostic and treatment center licensed to provide ambulatory surgery services.

REDCap is a PHP-based system, developed by Vanderbilt University and currently managed and updated through a national consortium, that supports the rapid setup of secure, Web-based study-specific database systems and associated forms. It provides full field validation capabilities (customized to each study), import/export (including export to common statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS and Excel), and file upload/management functions.

The New York City Clinical Data Research Network (NYC-CDRN) has been established to improve and streamline research in an effort to advance patient-centered research. NYC-CDRN uses a large volume of robust, high-quality patient data and support services from a collaboration of more than 20 partners, including WCM and NYP. The NYC-CDRN collects comprehensive medical histories for what will be as many as 6 million patients. 

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. The survey combines interviews and physical examinations. NHANES is a major program of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Medicare is the federally funded program that provides health insurance for the elderly, persons with end-stage renal disease, and some disabled. For persons age 65 and over, 97 percent are eligible for Medicare. Almost all Medicare beneficiaries have Part A coverage that includes hospital, skilled-nursing facility, hospice and some home health care. Information about Medicare eligibility and enrollment is available for all persons included in the SEER-Medicare data (both cancer and non-cancer cases). Medicare claims (bills) are available only for persons with fee-for-service coverage.

i2b2 enables researchers to discover cohorts of patients using data from EHR systems.  Through a point-and-click interface, researchers can build queries drawing from demographics, diagnoses, procedures, medications, and results recorded in Epic, the EHR system of Weill Cornell Physician Organization outpatient clinics (access to data from Eclipsys/Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager, the EHR system of NewYork-Presbyterian inpatient units, is planned).  i2b2 supports different types of queries of clinical data, including whether clinical concepts occurred at any point in a patient’s medical