Blueprint for aligned data exchange for research and public health

Abstract Making EHR Data More Available for Research and Public Health (MedMorph) is a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-led initiative developing and demonstrating a reference architecture (RA) and implementation, including Health Level Seven International Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (HL7 FHIR) implementation guides (IGs), describing how to leverage FHIR for aligned research and public health access to clinical data for automated data exchange. MedMorph engaged a technical expert panel of more than 100 members to model representative use cases, develop IGs (architectural and content), align with existing efforts in the FHIR community, and demonstrate the RA in research and public health uses. The RA IG documents common workflows needed to automatically send research data to Research Patient Data Repositories for multiple use cases. Sharing a common RA and canonical data model will improve data sharing for research and public health needs and generate evidence. MedMorph delivers a robust, reusable method to utilize data from electronic health records addressing multiple research and public health needs.