Preparatory to Research Activities

No IRB? No problem! You can complete a Prep to Research data privacy attestation, then use the DPA number to save your cohort search or list of MRNs for de-identified review using the self service chart review feature of the cohort discovery tool. 

There are several restrictions placed on self-service prep-to-research chart review.

  1. The data is all de-identified. De-identification of free text notes and reports is imperfect, so you may be incidentally exposed to identifiers when reviewing clinical documentation and reports, but for the most part you won't be working with PHI
  2. The number of records you can review is limited to 50 patients.
  3. You can only review these patients for 90 days, after which time your access to the cohort will be de-activated. 
  4. As per HIPAA, you cannot contact patients based on this data, nor can you disclose any of the data outside Stanford.

The first three restrictions are put in place to prevent inadvertent compliance violations. The fourth is the law.

If you have a need for identified data to support your prep-to-research activities, you can contact the Research Informatics Center for assistance.

How to Complete a New Prep-to-Research Data Privacy Attestation

To complete a new attestation associated with a determination, use the "New" button at the top of your Data Privacy Attestation Dashboard.

You have two choices: "Preparatory to research Activities" and "STARR Nav de-id data."

If you plan to conduct self-service chart review, please select "Preparatory to research Activities."

If you are instead interested in a "STARR-OMOP-deid BigQuery dataset, a High Risk dataset, on Nero" as described in this news story,  you will instead want to select the "STARR Nav deID data" option from the dropdown. 

Once you have completed your attestation, you can look up your newly issued DPA number on your Privacy Dashboard for use in self-service chart review.