The award for SIF 197 (formerly known as the Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW)) provides $3,000,000 over three years (June 2026 – June 2029) to support the staffing, operation, and long-term sustainability of the Research Data Warehouse (RDW), a dedicated research environment within UVA Health’s Enterprise Data Platform (Microsoft Fabric). The RDW is anticipated to be operated by the Research Data Office (RDO), a planned research unit within the School of Medicine.

Since the decommissioning of UVA’s Clinical Data Repository in 2018, researchers have operated within a fragmented data environment characterized by ad hoc requests, manual honest-broker workflows, and siloed data sources. The RDW addresses this gap by enabling governed, self-service access to standardized clinical data for investigators across the Medical Center (MC), School of Medicine, and School of Nursing.

All clinically relevant data within the RDW partition will be mapped to the OMOP (Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership) v5.4 Common Data Model, supporting reproducible cohort development and enabling participation in federated, multi-site research networks (e.g., Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI), National Clinical Cohort Collaborative (N3C)) without the need for project-specific data transformation.

The implementation plan follows an accelerated 18-month build beginning in July 2026. Phase 0 (July 2026 – December 2026) focuses on establishing the RDO, recruiting core staff, and validating the Microsoft Fabric/OMOP architecture. Phase 1 (January 2027 – June 2027) delivers the initial OMOP data load, governance portal, and researcher intake workflows. Phase 2 (July 2027 – December 2027) launches the RDO service desk, self-service analytics capabilities, and de-identified data products. Phase 3 (January 2028 – June 2028) expands capabilities to include multi-modal data (e.g., imaging and genomics metadata) and external partnerships. Phase 4 (July 2028 – June 2029) transitions the RDW to sustained operations supported by diversified funding streams.

Data governance will be overseen by the Joint Health Data Governance Council (JHDGC), a cross-institutional body comprising five subcommittees focused on data access, privacy, quality, technical standards, and research prioritization. The Medical Center will separately fund core platform integration services and the underlying Microsoft Fabric infrastructure.

The SIF budget is structured on a fiscal-year basis (beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30, 2029) and is intentionally front-loaded to support initial build and staffing: Year 1 ($1.25m; 42% of total award amount), Year 2 ($1.03m; 34% of total award amount), and Year 3 ($0.72m; 24% of total award amount).