# WU INSTITUTE OF CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCES

> **NIH NIH UL1** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $339,611

## Abstract

Project Summary
This pilot project proposes to implement and evaluate a scalable digital patient engagement strategy intended
to recruit participants to the All of Us program (AoU) and harness the vast amount of electronic health record
(EHR) information available at Washington University and BJC Healthcare (WU-BJC) for precision-medicine
research. To accelerate complex genetic discovery and translation, we believe it is critical to harness existing
data quickly and efficiently and to engage research participants via digital mechanisms. Our project provides a
prototype digital precision medicine research paradigm to increase public interest in “citizen science” and
participation in AoU. By integrating digital recruitment mechanisms and EHR-based phenotyping, we can
rapidly engage, recruit, and phenotype new AoU participants in a cost-effective and timely manner.
Our approach is generalizable, adaptable, and ultimately allows for the linkage of genomic data with EHR-
derived phenotypes to accelerate biomedical research. We will test this approach in the WU-BJC system,
Missouri's largest patient care provider (> 2 million individuals annually). We will recruit active patients for AoU,
support and enable their consent, and extract and submit their EHR-derived phenotyping data to AoU.
WU-BJC uses a common, cloud-hosted EHR (Epic), with ensuing clinical data available for research purposes
via extraction and harmonization processes that populate an OMOP CDM 5.2 data repository (Research Data
Core). By recruiting patients via our shared EHR (specifically, via the integrated patient portal, MyChart), we
will quickly and efficiently create a cohort with associated and well populated clinical data sets, all with minimal
costs and participant burden. This forward-thinking “direct-to-participant” model can also be implemented to
add new online assessments and rapid data updates compared to “traditional” in-person or pre-scheduled
approaches. Based on our preliminary studies, we anticipate a majority of eligible individuals will agree to
participate in our study, to future use of their data, and to future contact. This approach will enable researchers
to effectively target emerging health trends and research needs quickly and efficiently.
We will: (1) establish a digital, community-focused patient engagement, recruitment, and consent strategy,
targeting a combination of under-represented minority, rural, and medically underserved populations in the
areas served by WU-BJC; (2) implement a phenotyping pipeline to extract, harmonize, and submit clinical data
to AoU; and (3) evaluate and optimize strategies to recruit a representative sample of participants.
We will implement a digital, direct-to-participant engagement, recruitment, and consent strategy for AoU
participation. We will demonstrate the feasibility of rapidly and inexpensively creating computable participant
phenotypes, extracted from our EHR platforms. We will evaluate and demonstrate the value of ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10217859
- **Project number:** 3UL1TR002345-04S3
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** William G. Powderly
- **Activity code:** UL1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $339,611
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2017-06-19 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10217859

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10217859, WU INSTITUTE OF CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCES (3UL1TR002345-04S3). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10217859. Licensed CC0.

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