October 29, 2018: NIH Collaboratory Distributed Research Network Used to Analyze Abnormal Cancer Screening & Follow-up Rates in >6 Million People

In a new article in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, over 100 million person-years of curated claims data were evaluated to assess new rates and follow-up procedures for colorectal, breast, and cervical cancer. These observational data were collected from national and regional insurers participating in the NIH Collaboratory distributed research network. The proportion of abnormal screening results was consistent with rates reported from a cancer-specific screening consortium (1.8–7.7 for colorectal cancer, 23.8–26.0 for breast cancer, and 9.5–18.2 for cervical cancer).

“A strength of this analysis is its employment of a reusable analysis program executing against standardized and curated, routinely collected electronic data from various institutions to enable rapid, privacy-protecting, cost-efficient assessment of practice.” —Raman et al. JGIM 2018