OAKLAND CA –  A $54 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will allow Kaiser Permanente to conduct health research on public and clinical health areas using its electronic health record database.

"Kaiser Permanente is proud to be part of what President Obama called the 'single largest boost to biomedical research in history.' It's our mission to find answers to medicine's complex questions so that everyone can have better care," said Raymond J. Baxter, senior vice president, Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit, Research and Health Policy. "Health research is foundational to reforming the way we deliver care. Such evidence-based innovation is core to Kaiser Permanente's commitment to improving care delivery and enhancing quality outcomes, two fundamental goals of the current healthcare reform debate."

The NIH awarded 22 grants to Kaiser Permanente researchers in various regional centers, including a $25 million Grand Opportunities (GO) grant to conduct genotyping on 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members participating in the Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health (RPGEH), the largest population-based bio-bank in the United States.

This genetic information will be linked to data on participants from RPGEH health surveys, disease registries and Kaiser Permanente's EHR database. Researchers say the genotyping accomplished in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco, will roughly double the number of individuals in the United States available to researchers for genome-wide association studies.

A $7.2 million GO grant awarded to Kaiser Permanente will be used to develop a cardiovascular surveillance system for the Cardiovascular Research Network (a collaborative of 14 different health plans across the U.S. with approximately 11 million health maintenance organization members), and a $3.3 million GO grant will be used to create a National Research Database that will organize and leverage Kaiser Permanente's EHRs.

Other NIH grants will be used to study how to use natural language processing to more accurately extract data from the electronic medical record.

"We have a unique opportunity in front of us right now to transform and reform the way we deliver health care in this country," said John H. Cochran, MD, executive director of The Permanente Federation. "Kaiser Permanente believes that through evidence-based research and health information technology we can change how personalized healthcare is delivered."

Below is a brief description of each grant, broken down by Kaiser Permanente region. The numbers below reflect expected funding amounts over a two-year period, and may be subject to change.

Kaiser Permanente - Northern California Division of Research

    - $24,846,000 GO grant to conduct genotyping on 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members who are participating in the Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health.
    - $7,217,106 GO grant to develop a surveillance system for cardiovascular disease in the Cardiovascular Research Network.
    - $3,362,771 GO grant to create National Research Database that will organize and leverage Kaiser Permanente's EHRs on nearly 30 million current and past members in eight regions of the country.
    - $4,971,981 GO grant to study contemporary treatment and outcomes for atrial fibrillation in clinical practice.
    - $945,372 to study breast cancer survivorship.
    - $1,005,372 to extend and integrate the Kaiser Permanente EMR to measure rehabilitation outcomes for stroke patients.
    - $999,852 to study the management and outcomes of heart failure.
    - $980,000 to study the effectiveness of immediate versus delayed use of metformin in new-onset of type-2 diabetes.
    - $999,370 to establish the Kaiser Permanente Autoimmune Disease Registry.
    - $997,453 to study the cost effectiveness of hormonal therapy for clinically localized prostate cancer.
    - $402,527 to extend an investigation of biologic markers for autism.
    - $496,680 to improve understanding of the behavioral and social factors that impact adherence to diabetes care.
    - $441,521 to better understand how comprehensive HIV services provided by a multidisciplinary care team may influence how well patients follow treatment recommendations.
    - $102,277 to study the epidemiology, care and outcomes of patients with chronic renal insufficiency.
    - $92,772 to study lactation and glucose tolerance after a pregnancy with gestational diabetes.

Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research - Northwest

    - $3,925,824 for comparative effectiveness research in genomic and personalized medicine for colon cancer.
    - $996,603 to analyze five years of follow-up of data from a weight loss maintenance trial.
    - $343,694 to compare the costs of cancer diagnosis and treatment in managed care vs fee-for-services systems.
    - $316,000 to study what factors predict successful aging in elderly women.
    - $99,971 to study how to use natural language processing to more accurately extract data from the EMR.

Kaiser Permanente - Colorado Institute for Health Research

    - $184,501 for the Clinical Communication Research Center.

Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research - Georgia

    - $339,604 to study how psychosocial stress decreases patient adherence to recommended care which may increase the risk of poor metabolic control and subsequent onset of chronic disease and obesity