CRISPI

CRISPI is our vision for clinical informatics at the NIH to support the integration and analysis of complex and diverse clinical data sets.

Scientific progress demands more than just big ideas; it requires networks to exchange information seamlessly. Yet, all too often, our data reside in a hodgepodge of disconnected, siloed systems — an impenetrable jungle of information where treasures go undiscovered for lack of a map or common language. But what if we could build an advanced GPS navigation system to guide us in scientific discovery? That's the bold, new goal of CRISPI, short for Clinical Research Informatics Supporting PIs.

The term PIs refers to the principal investigators who lead labs and clinics at the National Institutes of Health. CRISPI is a tool for them and the broader NIH scientific community to more easily and securely share clinical data within the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP). CRISPI, in essence, is a new clinical informatics ecosystem that removes barriers for collaboration and enhances data-sharing.

The longstanding Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) landscape at the NIH has served us well for decades and has yielded breakthroughs such as HIV/AIDS treatments, cancer immunology, and a possible cure for sickle cell disease. Yet the CRI slowly became encumbered by its organic and uncoordinated development over many years. The NIH comprises 27 Institutes and Centers (ICs), and more than a dozen of them conduct research in the NIH Clinical Center. Analogous to states in the U.S. union, each IC has had its own culture and systems of operation; their local efforts were not always driven by requirements for interoperability among ICs and thus frequently have resulted in unique but redundant and siloed data systems. This is in stark contrast to the modern CRI infrastructure seen at U.S.-based academic centers that have capitalized on a more unified multi-center and broad-community approach to build highly interoperable clinical data systems that integrate the disparate needs of various centers within a single institution.

CRISPI is implementing advanced technologies common to leading academic centers to better support highly innovative and emerging clinical research conducted at the NIH. Culture change isn't easy. But with support from and in collaboration with multiple ICs, CRISPI is tackling common clinical study management challenges and developing shared common infrastructure with advanced data technologies, including:

CRISPI has developed new capabilities to modernize the existing clinical informatics enterprise, including:

• common infrastructure and a suite of advanced data technologies that allow for integrated end-to-end clinical trial management,
• sustainable data platforms to support the collection, integration, and analysis of complex clinical data,
• an application programming interface (API) framework to connect all NIH CRI systems and automate data exchange and enable broad interoperability over IC systems and data platforms.
• an easy-to-customize clinical research informatics infrastructure that supports FHIR^®-compliant data harmonization, data sharing, and participant identity management (with FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, being an informatics standard),
• patient-focused tools and data analytical platforms to improve patient outcomes and to ensure patient-reported needs and outcomes are represented at the core of clinical research work at NIH, and
• support for PIs focuses on understanding, designing and documenting the use of the centrally supported CRISPI systems and training researchers on their use.

Additional CRISPI Resources

• Projects
• The CRISPI Team
• Empowering intramural researchers with cutting-edge AI analytical tools and data (OIR Welcomes Dr. Nic Dobbins)