A Decade of Data in Alberta

A decade ago, Alberta was already home to world-class administrative health data. At the same time, healthcare was becoming increasingly data-driven. However, these data were difficult to access, analytical capacity was limited, and the infrastructure was underdeveloped, and researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and health system leaders frequently waited more than three years to access health data and analytical support.

As electronic health records became more widely available, the need shifted from simply accessing health data to creating a system that securely integrated, analyzed, and applied that data to support continuous learning and health system improvement.

Investment in AbSPORU from CIHR and provincial partners helped change that trajectory, enabling the partnership between AbSPORU and Provincial Research Data Services (PRDS).

This Investment over the past decade has allowed AbSPORU to form strategic partnerships across Alberta to address a fragmented data environment characterized by limited analytical capacity and multi-year data access delays.

Since its launch in 2014-2015, AbSPORU has contributed to more than 3,800 research and health system projects and expanded its number of accessible linked health data holdings from 16 to 70. AbSPORU immediately reduced the median data access timeline from more than three years to approximately just a matter of weeks, and has maintained this timeline ever since despite an increase in number and complexity of requests.

Transforming Alberta’s health data ecosystem required acting as both a convener and integrator, aligning the priorities of researchers, healthcare providers, governments, and patients while leveraging co-investments and creating collaboration across organizational and disciplinary boundaries.

The partnership between AbSPORU and PRDS has defined the embedded analyst model as an innovation in doing just that. This model has built communities of practice, developed specialized expertise, and strengthened connections between research and practice. What materialized is a mature ecosystem that supports patient-oriented research, learning health systems, clinical trials, precision medicine, and next-generation health data infrastructure including those leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning.

How the Challenge Is Being Addressed: Three Strategies

Strategy 1

Building Analytical Capacity: The embedded analyst model has expanded from a single analyst in 2012 to 43.6 full-time employees today, comprised of:

• 15.4 AbSPORU-funded
• 9 Alberta Health Services in-king
• and 19.2 supported by fee-for-service revenues

These analysts support approximately 300 new data service requests annually.

Strategy 2

Demonstrating Ecosystem Value: The team continually supports complex and large-scale projects. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team provided timely analytics to inform public health and policy decisions, and led the Alberta Post-COVID Study. The study recruited 100,000 Albertans and linked to administrative and laboratory data, generating one of Canada’s largest longitudinal post-COVID datasets.

They also supported the internationally recognized BedMed family of pragmatic trials, enabling over 400 family doctors across five provinces to lead health research directly within their day-to-day practices.

Additionally, a partnership with Samson Cree Nation co-developed community-governed health data dashboards integrating administrative and community-held data which demonstrated OCAP® principles in practice.

Strategy 3

Building Infrastructure for the Future: Alberta has established a modern digital foundation to transform daily medical records into powerful tools for health research and patient care. The AbSPORU-PRDS team supported the integration of Connect Care, Canada’s first province-wide electronic health record. To turn this raw information into meaningful medical insights, specialized data analysts were trained to safely navigate and evaluate these comprehensive health records.

As a natural evolution, the team is actively implementing Alberta’s new Trusted Research Environment (TRE) built on Snowflake infrastructure. The TRE will be a secure workspace that enables advanced analytics, machine learning, and integration of diverse datasets.

Expanding these capabilities across provincial lines, Alberta is now a partner in VITAL—a $210 million national initiative connecting data from over 160 hospitals across Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec.

Through nationwide collaborations like HDRN Canada, Alberta is also helping establish uniform data standards across the country. By making health research more secure, efficient, and interconnected, these advances ensure that patient data actively drives continuous improvements in healthcare while maintaining strong public trust.

Broader Impacts and Sustainability

AbSPORU has helped build the analytical capacity, modern data infrastructure, and collaborative partnerships that have created a sustainable learning health data ecosystem, supporting innovation across Alberta while contributing to strengthening Canada’s national health data ecosystem.

SPOR investment in AbSPORU has had a profound multiplier effect. Initial investments in analytical capacity have been leveraged through partnerships with provincial co-funders, the health system, universities, and national networks to create a sustainable, future-ready ecosystem whose capacity and impact now far exceed the original investment. Alberta has evolved from describing healthcare delivery to actively improving it and from fragmentation to a connected learning health data ecosystem that has fundamentally democratized access to health data, analytical expertise, and continuous learning for patients, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers alike.