Here is the second poster presentation from the NEDB 2013 conference at MIT. The conference was on Feb. 1, 2013, and was a boat-load of fun.
ABSTRACT:
As a premier research institution, the University of Pennsylvania harbors numerous databases: these run the gamut from clinical, research, and financial, to genomic and neurological. Integrating all these disparate data sources has become a massive endeavor at the University’s Medical System. In order to accommodate the organization’s vast needs for data, and to assist accomplishing the objective of become a data-driven enterprise, Penn built the Penn Data Store clinical data warehouse, one of 12 CCHIT-certified Data Warehouses within the USA designated for clinical research use. This warehouse is an ongoing project: it currently incorporates inpatient and outpatient data from eleven distinctly different medical record systems, and is constantly in the process of assimilating even more content from Penn’s medical databases in order to directly contribute to medical research.
Related articles
- EHRs a gold mine for medical research? (thlibrary.wordpress.com)
- Big Data Technology Does Not Replace a Data Warehouse (b-eye-network.com)
Vellum Information 
Penn Medicine’s Clinical Data Warehouse, the Penn Data Store (PDS), is the culmination of multiple years of continuing development. The goal of PDS is to integrate the most useful clinical data elements to support medical research and patient care initiatives through the health system. The advantage of utilizing PDS for data needs is that the data from multiple systems is consolidated into a single model, thus removing the need to file multiple requests for data from the disparate applications. PDS resolves the difficulties in data acquisition to ease the burden on all data consumers so that their time can be better spent on improving healthcare and not at gathering data. We strive to return data back to our requestors very quickly so that projects move forward quickly and efficiently.