VA, University of Chicago Partner to Build Cloud-Based Resource for Health Data

The Department of Veterans Affairs is working with the University of Chicago to develop a secure cloud-based data resource for health and genomic data.

VA Data Commons is envisioned as a software-as-a-service platform that will help researchers manage, analyze, synchronize and share clinical data from various VA data sources, GCN reported Tuesday.

The SaaS offering will be hosted on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud platforms. It is expected to feature computing infrastructure, co-located data and commonly used software services, tools and applications for handling data.

VA said in the solicitation for VADC that it needs to expand access to relevant health data to help researchers translate genetic and other research discoveries into meaningful clinical care for veterans.

The collaboration between the VA and the University of Chicago comes as researchers struggle to make full use of the data available to them. For instance, the agency said the VA Austin Information Technology Center has limited storage space and computing power for conducting approved scientific activities.

According to a contract justification, partners from the university spent the last two years customizing existing software to meet the VA’s specific data analysis, security and privacy requirements.

Work done on the software allows VA users to define and characterize patient cohorts for each project. The software also features the VA’s login process, which means agency researchers can gain access to it by using their personal identity verification cards.