Established in 2019, the UF Center of Drug Evaluation and Safety (CoDES), unites a multi-disciplinary group of big data researchers in epidemiology, health economics, health services research and decision-sciences who evaluate and project outcomes of medical technology and interventions to guide policy, clinical and personal decision-making. In addition to delivering new actionable evidence, CoDES fosters the development of new methods and analytic tools to enhance the evaluation of medical technology, interventions and regulatory science. CoDES focuses on research, training and service to integrate and build resources to foster the assessment and improvement of medication use and healthcare nationally and internationally.
CoDES research areas are embedded in active research programs in the Department of Pharmaceutical Outcomes & Policy and a variety of collaborating Departments, Centers and Institutes representing faculty from six UF colleges. CoDES is housed in Malachowsky Hall, which unites data scientists from the colleges of engineering, medicine and pharmacy. CoDES provides the infrastructure and oversight of data use and user management policies and procedures required by state and federal data policies.
Research facilities: CoDES serves as hub for researchers with interest in using a variety of CoDES data repositories. CoDES has currently active data user and license agreements for several national claims datasets including Medicare 2011-2022, Medicaid (1999-2022), and MarketScan Commercial Claims Data (2005-2023). Subcomponents of these data are linked to vital records from several states, UF Health EHR data, and other repositories. CoDES also provides the platform for MEMORY, the Medical Marijuana medical Outcomes Research Repository developed by the UF-based Consortium for Medical Marijuana Clinical Outcomes Research, a multi-university research consortium funded by the Florida legislature. Researchers can request use of these data within CoDES’s computing environment (secured for use of personal health information) based on a cost recovery fee schedule, and purchase support from data analysts and research assistants trained in the use of claims and EHR data. Besides maintaining its own secure computing environment, which is housed within UF Health, CoDES also houses data on the UF HiPerGator RV platform, which supports projects that need to comply with federal standards for data security (NIST 800-171 and NIST 800-53).
Training: CoDES supports a postdoctoral fellowship program and scientific exchange between its members via seminars, a listserv and a Twitter handle (@UFCoDES).