In a joint effort to modernize our clinical data infrastructure, UNC School of Medicine, NC TraCS Institute, and UNC Health have built the new Secure Health Informatics Research Environment (SHIRE). The SHIRE is a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based platform that provides flexible compute and analysis tools for projects using data from UNC Health's electronic health record (EHR).
In the SHIRE, research teams will have easy access to their research data and a large variety of analytics tools (e.g., RStudio, SAS, Jupyter, VSCode, Excel, Databricks), enabling them to do all their work inside the platform. Computing power is scalable, ranging in power from a laptop to a GPU. Notably, the SHIRE will also offer a secure, compliant environment for researchers to use a wide variety of large language models (LLMs) with clinical data, including GPT, Llama, and Claude.
The SHIRE will eventually be the required platform and storage location for any study using identified or HIPAA-limited electronic health record datasets from the Carolina Data Warehouse for Health (CDW-H). Beginning on November 3, we will gradually move various types of existing and new projects from the current CDW-H data provisioning model to the SHIRE. We anticipate completing the transition by the end of 2026.
Because SHIRE is a cloud-computing platform, there are costs associated with its use. While many of these costs are subsidized by UNC Health and the School of Medicine, consumption-based charges are passed on to researchers through a monthly billing process. All billable charges are based on the type and volume of compute actually used, making the platform a feasible option for large and small projects alike.
If you have an existing CDW-H project: You have already received a survey from NC TraCS requesting basic information about your project(s). This will help us determine whether and when your project will need to be transitioned to the SHIRE. Instructions and more information are forthcoming.
If you are planning a new CDW-H project: Submit a CDW-H request as you normally would. Assuming your proposed project qualifies for the SHIRE, you will be directed to a form to request a SHIRE workspace.
