Abraham, Abin
Le, Brian
Kosti, Idit
Straub, Peter
Velez-Edwards, Digna R.
Davis, Lea K.
Newton, J. M.
Muglia, Louis J.
Rokas, Antonis
Bejan, Cosmin A.
Sirota, Marina
Capra, John A.
Funding for this research was provided by:
American Heart Association (20PRE35080073)
National Institutes of Health (T32GM007347, K01LM012381, K01LM012381, R35GM127087)
March of Dimes Foundation (Prematurity Research Center - Ohio Collaborative)
Burroughs Wellcome Fund (Preterm Birth Initiative)
Article History
Received: 10 February 2022
Accepted: 10 August 2022
First Online: 28 September 2022
Declarations
:
: This study exclusively utilized the information extracted from the medical records in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) “Synthetic Derivative” database (SD). The SD is a de-identified copy of the main hospital medical record databases created for research purposes. The de-identification of SD records was achieved primarily through the application of a commercial electronic program, which was applied and assessed for acceptable effectiveness in scrubbing identifiers. For instance, if the name “John Smith” appeared in the original medical record, its corresponding record in the SD does not contain “John Smith.” Instead, it is permanently replaced with a tag [NAMEAAA, BBB] to maintain the semantic integrity of the text. Similarly, dates, such as “January 1, 2004,” have been replaced with a randomly generated date, such as “February 3, 2003.”The SD database (which contains over 3 million electronic records, with no defined exclusions) was accessed through database queries. Searches are logged and audited annually. As no HIPAA identifiers are available in the SD database, and this work does not plan to re-identify these records using the identified VUMC database, this study meets the criteria for non-human subjects research. Nonetheless, to ensure confidentiality and appropriate use of the SD, all relevant key personnel for this study entered a data use agreement, which prohibits any use of the data not described in this application, including the re-identification of the SD records.
: Not applicable.
: LJM is a consultant for Mirvie, Inc. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests.