The KP Research Bank is a national KP program built to enable world-class research that contributes to advances in health care. The KP Research Bank is a repository of KP medical records data, survey data, and genetic data collected from KP members who have voluntarily consented to participate in the KP Research Bank. The repository has grown to over 400,000 participants, including a general cohort, a pregnancy cohort, and a cancer cohort. The unique combination of genetic data and longitudinal medical records data on a large collection of diverse KP members enables research into the genetic factors that influence disease risk, therapeutic response, and long-term outcomes, including those that are population-specific and that may contribute to health disparities in under-represented populations.
A key strength of the KP Research Bank resource is the comprehensive medical records available on all participants. As KP is an integrated health system, the medical records represent virtually all primary and secondary care for as long as the member has been with KP, and these records are updated in KP Research Bank’s virtual data warehouse every six months.
The genetic data includes genotyping on over 395,000 participants using a microarray that includes a common SNP backbone for GWAS and imputation, as well as dense coverage of pathogenic coding variants for a wide range of diseases that have potential value for precision medicine.
Access to KP Research Bank resources by non-KP researchers requires collaboration with a KP researcher, who can help refine the phenotype of interest. The KP Research Bank hosts data and analytic tools in a secure analytic platform that is managed by KP. Researchers will be given access to this platform to perform analyses.
Use of KP Research Bank resources is intended to facilitate publishable, public domain research that will advance the understanding of health and disease and improve care delivery.
