Research Services Program
The Centre for Health Informatics offers a wide array of analytic services to help researchers elevate their impact and further their research programs. All analytic services can include analytic plan development, ethics application support, and manuscript support for the writing of methods and result sections, if required.
Research Services
We offer a wide array of analytic services to help researchers elevate their impact and further their research programs. We can work with you to help develop an analytic plan, apply for ethics, facilitate access to health data, or provide quotes for analytic services and a letter of support for grant submissions. We aim to be a one-stop-shop for your research needs.
CHI has a robust and diverse team of health data analysts that specialize in using administrative data for to conduct cutting-edge research. We work to facilitate timely data access to health data with the Alberta Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Data Research Services team that is embedded within the Centre and works closely with our analysts. Our team of analysts includes machine-learning and NLP experts, biostatisticians with extensive experience in using administrative health data for research, epidemiologists to help ensure your methodology will answer your research question, and data management experts. All projects are assigned a primary and secondary analyst. This system allows for increased quality assurance, timelines to be met, the primary analyst is supported by another analyst with different skills, and fosters an environment of continuous learning for our clients and analysts. The CHI Research Services Program offers hourly rates and comprehensive project-based contracts.
All analytic services can include analytic plan development, ethics application support, and manuscript support for the writing of methods and result sections, if required, on top of innovative analysis. Our multi-disciplinary team includes analysts with a vast array of skill sets that are ready to work on your project. All projects involved our overarching expertise in epidemiology and biostatistics, some of the others areas we specialize in are: data-related areas including administrative (secondary) data, Electronic Medical Records, and unique datasets or methods-related areas such as natural language processing, machine learning and creating visualization tools.
Data Skills
We have vast expertise in working with administrative health data. This is data that was not collected for research purposes and can often be messy or incomplete. We work to improve data quality while using our skills to use this data to improve healthcare through research and clinical decision tools.
Our team has extensive knowledge on working with Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and extracting data from these records. This process can be complicated but EMR data extraction is a vital skill in health informatics.
We have extensive experience working with unique data created for various reasons such as registry data. This data can be linked with other data sets to create a robust dataset for research in a specialized area.
Methods Skills
Natural language processing refers to a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on giving computers the ability to understand text and spoken words in much the same way human beings can. NLP combines computational linguistics—rule-based modelling of human language—with statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models. Secondary health data includes large amounts of written data that is not able to be coded, this requires the development of NLP algorithms and use of NLP to analyze the data to create a robust data set that includes clinical notes.
CHI Analysts are able to blend these technologies enable computers to process human language in the form of text or voice data and to ‘understand’ its full meaning, complete with the speaker or writer’s intent and sentiment.
Machine learning is a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building. It is a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention. With the mass amounts of data points in administrative health datasets, machine learning algorithm development plays an important role to analyze data as well as improve research in the future.
To get the most value from machine learning, CHI analysts develop and pair the best algorithms with the right tools and processes to create the best model for your project and scope.
Data visualizations tools elevate data and make complicated data easier to understand by rendering information in a visual format such as a graph, chart, or heat map for data analysis purposes. Such tools make it easier to research, work with, and present mass amounts of data. CHI analysts are available to help researchers create effective data visualization tools, so that teams are enabled to make data-driven decisions or present their findings without having to spend valuable time trying to wrangle raw data into an interpretable format.
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