UTHealth Houston to lead national RWD initiative to tackle Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias 

A $27.2 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will enable UTHealth Houston to lead a nationwide initiative to harness real-world data (RWD), advance AI tools, and accelerate discoveries in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. 

The project, “Using Real-World Data to Derive Common Data Elements for Alzheimer’s Disease and AD-Related Dementias Research Through Ontological Innovation” (ReCARDO), will create shared data standards, natural language processing tools, and AI models to make research more efficient and collaborative. By standardizing and linking data from multiple sources, ReCARDO aims to generate insights that better reflect real-world patient experiences and support faster progress in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. 

“Leveraging real-world data for research is critical and exciting, as data-driven insights can be directly translated to real world impact,” Hongfang Liu, PhD, vice president of learning health system at UTHealth Houston, said. “This award is critical because it’s going to position UTHealth Houston as the center in conducting state-of-the-art data science research related to real-world data.” 

Liu will lead the initiative alongside two other principal investigators: GQ Zhang, PhD, vice president and chief data scientist at UTHealth Houston and co-director of the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies, and Licong Cui, PhD, associate professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics. Together, they will oversee the design of common data elements and advanced analytics that can be applied across health systems nationwide. 

Alzheimer’s disease currently affects more than 7 million Americans aged 65 and older, with prevalence expected to rise sharply in the coming decades. The ability to analyze RWD from electronic health records (EHRs), insurance claims, mobile apps, and wearable devices is becoming increasingly important to understand disease trends and treatment outcomes outside of controlled clinical trials. 

UTHealth Houston will serve as the central hub for ReCARDO, coordinating efforts across a consortium of 10 institutions: Mayo Clinic, Rush University, University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, University of Washington, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Florida, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and Vanderbilt University. Cui highlighted the collaborative nature of the effort, stating:  

“This is great teamwork bringing together collective expertise across the UTHealth Houston campus and partner institutions to accelerate real-world evidence generation in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia research.” 

Zhang emphasized the importance of a coordinated, national approach: 

“Developing the resources to leverage real-world data is critical to empowering aging studies. It requires data scientists and researchers on aging across the country to team up and work together… We hope this initiative can help accelerate progress in aging research, and with data-driven discovery we hope we can do it faster, cheaper, and more effectively.” 

Jiajie Zhang, PhD, dean of McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, underscored the scale of the initiative:  

“This award highlights the critical mass of data science, AI, and informatics expertise concentrated at UTHealth Houston… This is exactly the kind of large-scale, team science initiative needed to drive real-world impact in Alzheimer’s research.”