| Big data is extremely important for health research. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) currently processes and maintains the largest volume of health care data files in the world. In response to the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, CMS launched the Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse (CCW). In September 2005, CMS announced the implementation of an Integrated Data Repository (IDR) with the Teradata Platform. IDR and CCW are two different big data repositories being used by RTI International Division of eHealth, Quality and Analytics (eQUA) on a number of projects. This article investigates these two health data repositories details, advantages and disadvantages each of these data sources in terms of their usage for health research.
First, the platforms and structure of the two databases is quite different. The IDR is in a Teradata platform and RTI programmers access the IDR through the CMS mainframe, using SAS/Access to Teradata. The CCW is a Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC) that users can access by using SAS Enterprise Guide. Due to these differences, both require appropriate skills set and the user experience vary across these two systems
Second, there are differences in how frequently the data is being loaded into the two databases. The IDR has weekly uploads and the claims data in IDR are more up-to-date then data in the CCW. IDR will be a better option if you need to work with a more recent set of claims.
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Alon Evron - RTI International
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