Aim: This article describes American Reinvestment and Recovery Act comparative effectiveness research data infrastructure (DI) investments and identifies facilitators and barriers to implementation.
Materials & methods: We reviewed original project proposals, conducted an investigator survey and interviewed project officers and principal investigators.
Results: DI projects assembled or enhanced existing clinical datasets, established linkages between public and private data sources and built infrastructure. Facilitators included building on existing relationships across organizations and making collection as seamless as possible for clinicians.
Conclusion: To sustain DI, investigators should reduce the burden of comparative effectiveness research data collection on practices, adequately address data privacy and security issues, resolve or lessen the impact of data-linking issues and build research capacity for other investigators and clinicians.
Keywords: ARRA; American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; CER; comparative effectiveness research; data infrastructure.