Lee Lab
Leveraging Electronic Health Information to Advance Precision Medicine (LEAP)
Under the leadership of Stanford professors Drs. Jennifer Lee and Mei-Chiung Shih, LEAP experts from several VA medical centers, Stanford, Yale, and other academic institutions harness “Big” electronic health and other national data sources to provide real-world evidence about pressing health issues. LEAP uses novel methods on the Veterans Health Administration’s electronic health data, the longest-running and largest U.S. electronic health records system, to inform population health outcomes, individual precision health, healthcare system management, and quality in clinical practice.
LEAP is a national data initiative and a multi-site collaboration comprised of data scientists, biostatisticians, epidemiologists, informaticians, and clinical leadership partners. The VA’s extensive health information archive offers a rich opportunity to develop Precision Medicine–based strategies that can be implemented in pragmatic and attainable ways. LEAP advances national precision medicine initiatives, which leverages large-scale information to customize medical treatments based on a patient’s genetic history, environment, and lifestyle. LEAP utilizes existing large data sources to augment and support the strategic planning, conduct, generalizability, and impact of multi-site randomized clinical trials. Recent work has included a focus on research related to glycemic dysregulation, cardiometabolic conditions, cancers, and COVID-19.
Objectives of LEAP
- Establishing a quality real-world evidence (RWE) base about health conditions, populations, interventions, and outcomes using VA EHR.
- Augment and support Random Clinical Trials (RCTs) to improve individual and population health.
Ongoing Observational Real-World Evidence Exemplars
- Pre-diabetes detection and management
- Longitudinal progression of glycemic dysregulation
- Metformin prescribing patterns in pre-diabetes
- SARS-CoV-2 infection and outcomes in patients with glycemic dysregulation