Scaling Research Infrastructure to Attract Funding & Multi-Site Studies
Overview
A mid-sized academic medical center (500-900 beds) with a growing research program had extensive clinical, genomic, and imaging datasets and wanted to leverage these assets for external collaborations, grant funding, and multi-site research studies. Leadership sought to make their fragmented data usable to expand research initiatives and position the institution as a leader in precision medicine research.
Unlike larger AMCs with dedicated in-house teams and platforms, this institution lacked the internal resources to efficiently structure and leverage their data, limiting its ability to participate in external studies.
Challenges
Unstructured, Siloed Data: The institution had vast data assets spread across multiple systems, departments, and formats that were difficult to leverage.
Infrastructure Gaps: The AMC lacked the scalable data infrastructure required for high-impact research.
Compliance & Governance Complexity: External partnerships were limited due to data privacy concerns.
Why They Chose datma
While many AMCs build internal data infrastructure over time, this institution sought a faster, lower-lift path to becoming research-ready without committing to a multi-year investment or hiring large teams. datma provided a turnkey solution: automating ingestion, mapping, and standardization of datasets while preserving institutional control through a federated architect. This allowed the AMC to collaborate with external organizations while ensuring that raw data never left the institution’s infrastructure, preserving privacy and compliance. While generating revenue from data collaborations was an important factor, the real value came from positioning the institution as a research hub, attracting new grants, funding, and partnerships that could sustain long-term innovation.
In addition to positioning the institution as a credible research collaborator, datma’s platform helped support a more sustainable research strategy. By enabling partnerships that brought in consistent funding, the institution could offset infrastructure costs, allowing them to grow their research capabilities without stretching their internal budgets. This made the value proposition of choosing datma not just a strategic one, but a financially viable choice over time.
Solution: datma.FED
datma.FED provided a federated, privacy-preserving infrastructure that standardized fragmented datasets across the institution, making them queryable for both internal research initiatives and external collaborations. By enabling evidence-generation partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, the platform secured funding for precision medicine studies while ensuring full data governance. Additionally, the ability to participate in multi-site research initiatives strengthened the institution’s role as a key player in national studies.
Results & Impact
Strengthened Institutional Position as a credible research collaborator, opening the door to new grants and partnerships.
Enabled Participation in National Research Efforts by ensuring privacy-compliant, multi-site query capabilities..
Faster Study Execution by streamlining data preparation and harmonization process.