Accessing Big Data for Health Research

Researchers have a new option for securely accessing more than 400 billion federal healthcare records via a virtual data center, says Niall Brennan of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Until recently, researchers who wanted to use Medicare and Medicaid claims records and other information had to request delivery of encrypted storage media. But now, they can use the new Virtual Research Data Center to gain remote access to a physical CMS data center, explains Brennan, acting director of CMS's Office of Enterprise Management.

"CMS epitomizes big data. We have 2.5 billion claims submitted annually and collect billions of other non-claim data annually," says Brennan in an interview with Information Security Media Group.

In the new offering, researchers can use a virtual private network to access CMS data, which includes Medicare and Medicaid claims data dating back as far as 1999, as well as survey and enrollment data, he says.

In the past, CMS was only able to ship encrypted storage media to limited numbers of researchers on an infrequent basis. Now, more academic and government researchers can access the data for on a more timely basis and at a lower cost, he says.

To protect beneficiaries' data privacy, Social Security numbers and other identifying information is removed, and researchers can only access "minimal necessary" data as defined by HIPAA, he says.

In the interview, Brennan discusses:

• How the virtual research data center fits into President Obama's Big Data Research and Development Initiative, aimed at bolstering researchers' ability to gain insights from the vast data collections of government agencies;
• How researchers are credentialed and authenticated for accessing the data;
• Safeguards CMS uses to protect data against breaches.

Brennan was named acting director of the Office of Enterprise Management at CMS on Nov. 5. In this capacity, Niall oversees research and analysis published by CMS, as well as efforts to make its data available to external researchers seeking to promote better understanding of health care in the U.S. Previously, Brennan served as director of CMS's Office of Information Products and Data Analytics where he oversaw agency efforts on data storage and dissemination, analytics and the creation of information products. Prior to CMS, Niall worked at the Brookings Institution, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Congressional Budget Office and the Urban Institute.