The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has launched a platform enabling researchers to access its large store of digital health care data.
According to CMS, "given the rapidly growing demand for timelier Medicare and Medicaid data, the agency needs a less resource-intensive means of responding to data requests from researchers.
The CMS Virtual Research Data Center provides researchers access to CMS data from their own workstations so they can analyze and manipulate data – rather than requiring them to request data and receive it as encrypted data files.
"We’re acutely aware of the huge potential that CMS data holds for creating a more efficient, higher quality health care system, and researchers play a large part in this transformation,” said CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner.
The cost of accessing the data will drop from around $100,000 for a large sample of data for Medicare Parts A, B, and D, down to $40,000 for a full year of unlimited access.
Access would be via secure virtual desktop, and data refreshes could occur with greater frequency.
More information here: http://www.resdac.org/.
