FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

All members of the BSD are automatically eligible for an account. Request your account here with your BSD credentials. Accounts are normally issued within two business days after we receive all necessary information. For REDCap, BSDAD or UCHAD are acceptable login accounts.

If you do not know your BSD credentials, please call 773-834-4000 or email bsdis@bsd.uchicago.edu.

You can find the BSD password change form here. If you have forgotten your BSD password, please call 773-834-4000 or email bsdis@bsd.uchicago.edu.

If you need external collaborator account password help, please visit the UCMIT Password Reset Self-Service site. If you need further help, email bsdis@bsd.uchicago.edu or call 773-834-4000.

CRI resources are open to all members of the University of Chicago BSD and their collaborators. (See above for information about collaborator accounts.) We also work with other institutions, including other universities, hospitals, and the medical industry, on collaborative projects to improve research and health care. Learn more about our external partnerships here.

• For CRDW, https://mycri.cri.uchicago.edu/ while on VPN.
• For HPC access, winstats services, and research storage, select a service and submit a ticket: https://uchicago.service-now.com/services?id=services_sc_category&catalog_id=2ada8bc8db69cd50f0f1aa1d13961980&sys_id=3285b946dbbe25908de21d89139619b9
• For REDCap, submit a ticket here
• For Biocore, submit a ticket at biocore.cri.uchicago.edu 
• For App Development, submit a ticket to cri-app-dev@lists.uchicago.edu
• For all other services, please select a service and submit a ticket here: https://uchicago.service-now.com/services?id=services_sc_category&catalog_id=2ada8bc8db69cd50f0f1aa1d13961980&sys_id=6164cecadb21e5108de21d8913961959

See links below for most current facilities pages:

https://cri.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CRI-Facilities_2024.pdf

https://cri.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CRI_FacilitiesExpanded-compute-and-storage-2024.pdf

The Center for Research Informatics is funded by the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago with additional funding provided by the Institute for Translational Medicine, CTSA grant number 2U54TR002389-06 from the National Institutes of Health.

For a grant:

Data used in this study will be provided by the Clinical Research Data Warehouse (CRDW) maintained by the Center for Research Informatics (CRI) at University of Chicago. The CRDW has been approved by the IRB to operate as an enterprise resource to support research throughout the Biological Sciences Division (BSD). Data in the CRDW comes from Billing, Clinical Registries, Research Systems, ancillary systems as well as our Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and comprises all encounters from 1/1/2006 to date. This includes over 30 million inpatient and outpatient encounters for at least 3 million distinct patients resulting billions of observations from patients in the University of Chicago Medicine health system. The Center for Research Informatics (CRI) is funded by the Biological Sciences Division and the Institute for Translational Medicine/CTSA (NIH 2U54TR002389-06) at the University of Chicago.

For a paper:

Data from this study were provided by the IRB approved Clinical Research Data Warehouse (CRDW) maintained by the Center for Research Informatics (CRI) at University of Chicago. The Center for Research Informatics is funded by the Biological Sciences Division and the Institute for Translational Medicine/CTSA (NIH 2U54TR002389-06) at the University of Chicago.

For an IRB protocol:

Data used in this study will be provided by the Clinical Research Data Warehouse (CRDW) maintained by the Center for Research Informatics (CRI) at University of Chicago. The CRDW has been approved by the IRB (11-0539) to operate as an enterprise resource to support research throughout the Biological Sciences Division (BSD). Data in the CRDW comes from Billing, Clinical Registries, Research Systems as well as our Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and comprises all encounters from 1/1/2006 to date. Data types to be included in this research include demographics, encounters, diagnoses, procedures, medications, labs, ADT, and flowsheets. (Please note that the last sentence may need to be expanded or reduced dependent upon the subject areas within your specific area of research.)

General language for acknowledging REDCap:

The REDCap project at the University of Chicago is hosted and managed by the Center for Research Informatics. REDCap development was originally funded by the Biological Sciences Division and by the Institute for Translational Medicine, CTSA grant number NIH CTSA UL1TR002389 from the National Institutes of Health.

For grants and IRB documentation:

The Center for Research Informatics at the University of Chicago Biological Sciences offers the use of REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) as a central location for data processing and management. REDCap was developed by Vanderbilt University, with collaboration from a consortium of institutional partners, as a toolset and workflow methodology for electronic collection and management of research and clinical trial data. REDCap is a secure, web-based application that is flexible enough to be used for a variety of types of research. REDCap provides an intuitive user interface that streamlines project development and improves data entry through real-time validation rules (with automated data type and range checks). REDCap also provides easy data manipulation (with audit trails for reporting, monitoring and querying patient records) and an automated export mechanism to common statistical packages (SPSS, SAS, Stata, R/S-Plus). In addition to traditional data capture functionality, REDCap’s survey capabilities are a powerful tool for building and managing online surveys. The research team can create and design surveys in a web browser and engage potential respondents using a variety of notification methods. All data collection projects rely on a thorough, study-specific data dictionary, defined by all members of the research team in an iterative, self-documenting process. This iterative development and testing process results in a well-planned and individualized data collection strategy.  REDCap was developed specifically around HIPAA-Security guidelines and is recommended to University researchers by both our Privacy Office and Institutional Review Board. Access to the system requires an University of Chicago account (BSDAD or UCHAD) with external users supported using University sponsored accounts. As for data security, all web-based information transmission is encrypted and data is stored on VM servers. The servers are housed in the energy-efficient, state-of-the-art Kenwood Data Center at 6045 S. Kenwood Avenue on the University of Chicago campus. This new, 4600-square-foot data center was designed with redundancy in mind and has been tested to withstand extended power outages without system or service interruption. Servers are physically secure in this continuously staffed (by ITS) and monitored facility and are protected by an enterprise grade firewalls (Palo Alto). The Kenwood datacenter is equipped to house systems that may fall under certain federal guidelines, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), making the CRI’s resources essential for researchers who work with protected health information. Access to the storage system from outside the University of Chicago Campus network is only allowed through the CISCO AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client (VPN software). Access to the data is managed via Active Directory groups using the Biomedical Sciences Division Active Directory (BSDAD). More information about REDCap can be found at https://www.projectredcap.org.