Across UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine, providing the best possible care and undertaking world class research share a common priority: maintaining patient privacy.<\/p>\n
Researchers routinely work with detailed patient records, genomic data, imaging, and real-time health metrics. These datasets are incredibly valuable for advancing scientific discovery. The datasets also contain personally identifiable and highly sensitive information. Without a secure platform to store, process, and analyze this data, the risk of breaches, misuse, and unauthorized access increases significantly \u2013 posing a threat to patient privacy. In late 2025, a silo-busting collaboration between UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine worked to address this very issue and together, the team built the\u00a0Secure\u00a0Health\u00a0Informatics\u00a0Research\u00a0Environment, or SHIRE.<\/p>\n
\u201cLaunching the SHIRE underscores UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine\u2019s shared commitment to the people of North Carolina,\u201d said Dr. David McSwain, UNC Health\u2019s Chief Medical Informatics Officer. \u201cOur teams didn\u2019t settle for just a ‘better’ solution. This collaboration led to creation of the new gold standard \u2013 built from the ground up \u2013 that will further both ground-breaking research and enhanced patient care.\u201d<\/p>\n
SHIRE is a secure, full-feature cloud computing environment where users can securely work with sensitive data from UNC Health\u2019s electronic health record. With investment and resources from the UNC School of Medicine, UNC’s NC TraCS Institute, and UNC Health, this medical research solution enables UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine to accelerate world-class healthcare research while keeping our patients protected.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SHIRE plays a critical role in ensuring that patient data is protected throughout its lifecycle,\u201d explained Emily Pfaff, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of Informatics and Data Science (IDSci) at NC TraCS. \u201cThis includes implementing strict access and data exfiltration controls, as well as compliance with HIPAA. When researchers use the SHIRE to analyze or generate insights from patient data, this secure environment helps ensure the models do not inadvertently expose sensitive information outside of the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SHIRE can also support\u00a0multiple users on one project, all working on the same shared data. The workspaces created within the SHIRE provide access to all the tools that researchers are accustomed to in one self-contained environment. Because of its scalable computing function, SHIRE grows\u00a0with<\/i>\u00a0the task and handles large data sets with ease. The ability to do all of their work within one platform allows researchers to work more efficiently and effectively on their projects\u00a0and\u00a0<\/i>with each other, all while maintaining patient data privacy and protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ability to provision the data required for our project in SHIRE, and the AI, LLM and data tools (such as Databricks) that are available on SHIRE are critical to our ability to successfully carry out the project,\u201d shared Ashok Krishnamurthy, Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI).<\/p>\n
\u201cI love SHIRE! Most secure research environments force a tradeoff between data protection and computational capability, but SHIRE is a big step toward resolving that tension,\u201d explained Abhishek (Abhi) Bhatia, PhD Candidate in Health Informatics at UNC-Chapel Hill. \u201cMy work spans multiple disciplines and data types, and I am constantly pulling from different programming languages, analytical frameworks, and collaborative teams that each bring their own workflows. SHIRE’s combination of multi-language support, version control, model persistence, and several other features not only keeps up with how health data research works today, but it\u2019s actively building toward how it will work in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the first \u201cone-stop-shops\u201d<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n As one of only a few academic medical institutions to create a platform like this, thoughtful collaboration was essential. Researchers using the tool thus far have found it incredibly valuable, and project leaders attribute that usefulness to ensuring the researcher\u2019s voice and needs were considered from the beginning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe focused first on the idea of a \u2018one-stop shop\u2019: a self-contained, secure data platform approved for sensitive data and leveraging scalable compute,\u201d shared Pfaff. \u201cBut we knew to be effective, this platform also needed a low barrier to entry. Most tools used by researchers are not designed with them at the table, and we ensured that was not the case for this initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n