Duke's participation in several Clinical Data Research Networks (CDRNs) makes it easier to conduct multi-site studies by enabling access to well-curated EHR data at all member institutions, including Duke.

Leveraging the CDRN program provides many benefits to your research:

  • Quickly get counts of patients meeting your eligibility criteria

  • Assess feasibility of multi-site studies and engage in data-driven site selection

  • Find collaborators at other member institutions

  • Navigate the associated regulatory processes

Our team can help you learn about the Duke CDRN program and the process for accessing CDRN resources. 

Contact us to learn more about our available resources and services.

CDRNs available to Duke investigators

STAR Clinical Research Network — A PCORnet Member Network

  • Scope of Data or Reach: Local, Regional, and National

  • Population:14+ million (STAR); 68+ million (PCORnet)

  • Who is Involved: 1) Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), 2) the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network (VHAN), 3) Meharry Medical College (MMC), 4) Duke University Health System, 5) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 6) Wake Forest Baptist Health, 7) Health Sciences of South Carolina, and 8) Mayo Clinic, headquartered in Minnesota.

With data on over 12 million patients, the STAR CRN network consists of academic health centers, community hospitals and a range of outpatient practices including primary care, specialty practices and safety net facilities that serve diverse populations. Through this network, we have access to a broad array of clinical data, informatics tools, patients, providers, and systems to address an array of research questions.

The objective of our CRN is to robustly support comparative effectiveness studies, pragmatic clinical trials, health system innovation, and the other research needs of our stakeholders and partners. Our network is particularly focused on research to improve health in the southern United States which has the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, and other conditions, as well as significant disparities in health status and health care delivery.

  ACT Network at Duke (i2b2)

  • Scope: Local and National

  • Population: ~150 M

  • Who Is Involved: 50 CTSA institutions

The ACT Network is a real-time platform allowing researchers to explore and validate feasibility for clinical studies from the comfort of their desktop.

Use ACT to discover patient cohorts at Duke and more than 50 sites across the nation. Duke CTSI has made the ACT Network available to all Duke researchers at no cost, but you must request access to receive credentials in the ACT portal.

Once registration is complete and you have received your credentials, you can use i2b2, a self-service tool to query Duke EHR-data and SHRINE to query Duke data and data from the entire network for aggregate counts.

ACT was developed collaboratively by members of NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Consortium, with funding from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Have questions about ACT? e-Mail CTSI_ACT@dm.duke.edu.

National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C)

  • Scope: Local and National
  • Population: 13.5 million
  • Who is Involved: 73 sites

The N3C is a partnership among the NCATS-supported Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program hubs, the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H)(link is external), and NIGMS-supported Institutional Development Award Networks for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR), with overall stewardship by NCATS. Collaborators will contribute and use COVID 19 clinical data to answer critical research questions to address the pandemic.