The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has several pioneering initiatives reshaping Wisconsin’s health data ecosystem. From building a hub that pools electronic health record (EHR) data from four major health systems, to developing a secure, flexible computing environment for research teams to access the data, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health has laid the foundation for research collaborations that will accelerate discovery.
While the four major health systems participating in the data hub covered a lot of Wisconsin’s population, there was one crucial omission: the data set did not include birth outcomes from Wisconsin’s busiest birthing hospital.
Patients who receive their prenatal care from UW Department of Ob-Gyn physicians and certified nurse midwives go on to deliver at UnityPoint Health-Meriter Hospital, which has averaged nearly 4,800 births per year over the last five years.
“We know that what happens during pregnancy and during delivery can have lifelong impacts on people’s health,” says Ellen Hartenbach, MD, chair of the UW Department of Ob-Gyn. “But how can we see the connections between, for example, high blood pressure or preeclampsia during delivery and someone’s long-term cardiovascular health risk? We needed to link the pre-pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum data to better understand the impact of pregnancy and birth outcomes on the overall health of moms and babies.”
To help solve this problem, the UW Department of Ob-Gyn proposed the Data Link for Healthy Families. Funded by a grant from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Data Link for Healthy Families establishes the Maternal-Child Health Data Commons, which connects prenatal, postnatal, and infant care data from UW Health and private practice groups in Madison to the delivery and postpartum data in the UPH-Meriter EHR. Kara Hoppe, DO, PhD, professor in the UW Department of Ob-Gyn Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine is the principal investigator on the grant alongside co-investigator Jomol Mathew, PhD, UW SMPH Associate Dean for Informatics and Information Technology.
“Modern bioinformatics and machine learning tools allow us to study these large data sets in ways we never thought possible,” Dr. Hoppe says. “This link to include the pregnancy and delivery experience in our data set will help us uncover complex patterns and generate novel insights from our state’s maternal-child health data.”
Researchers hope Data Link for Healthy Families can serve as a blueprint for future maternal-child health data integrations and open up opportunities for the UW School of Medicine and Public Health to lead multi-institutional research collaborations. In addition, the data link will help enhance clinical workflows and support evidence-based decision-making; facilitate in-depth investigations into the long-term effects of adverse birth outcomes on maternal and child health; and equip researchers, clinicians, and policymakers with data-driven insights that can impact policy and improve health outcomes across the state.
published July 2026
