Introduction

The PopMedNet™ system enables simple, efficient creation and use of distributed data networks, through a set of tools and web-based services. It is optimized to facilitate distributed analyses of medical product safety, comparative effectiveness, quality, medical resource utilization, cost-effectiveness, and related studies. The system provides secure, customized, private portals, query tools, and file transfer capabilities. It supports both menu driven queries and distributed analyses using complex, single use or multi-use programs designed to execute against a local data resource.

Data partners exercise full control over the files they make available for querying, the results returned to requestors, and the individuals who are permitted to submit queries. The PopMedNet™ software can accommodate a wide scope of network sizes and complexity, ranging from of single datasets held by only two organizations through multi-year projects encompassing dozens of organizations and dozens of data resources.

This document describes the overall system architecture, and details the technical and security approaches implemented.  Individual networks may adopt different implementations. 

Note: This document uses screen shots from the reference implementation of the PopMedNet™ system. 

Networks powered by PopMedNet™ software can customize and brand the network as desired. The Department of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute (HPHCI) led development of the system in collaboration with Lincoln Peak Partners (LPP). Lincoln Peak Partners provides support services and secure hosting for current system users, and leads development of system enhancements.

This document describes PopMedNet Release 3.1, a major upgrade to the previous version 2 release.  Release 3.1 includes a redesigned and enhanced security system as well as a “plug-in” framework for queries and the data models that support them.  This approach provides a more secure, extensible, and scalable system for integration of request models implemented in both native and foreign technologies.