Playbook

Clinical Data Warehouse: Build & Governance Checklist

Interactive playbook and working checklist to stand up a Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW), capture key decisions, assign owners, and record governance, access controls, ETL cadence, and SLAs.

Interactive Tool

Clinical Data Warehouse: Build & Governance Checklist

Purpose

This interactive playbook helps teams stand up a Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) with clear data models, governance, access controls, and operational cadences. Use it to assign owners, record decisions, and track progress so analytics are reliable and reproducible.

Who should use this

Data leaders, CDW engineers, ETL owners, clinical data stewards, analytics consumers, privacy/security, and measurement owners.

How to use this form

  1. Complete fields with current plans or decisions.
  2. Save progress to store the record for review, handoff, and governance meetings.
  3. Use the 'Immediate next steps' field to create actionable items for the next sprint.
List each source (system name), owner/team, primary data types, and connection method. Example: 'EHR (Epic) — Health IT — encounters, medications — HL7/ODBC'.
Name, role, and contact for each steward (comma separated).
Select a starting model or approach for harmonizing data.
List key measures, with definitions, numerator/denominator, owners, and refresh cadence.
Typical frequency to refresh the CDW from source systems (use decimal for fractions e.g., 0.5 for twice daily).
Who is responsible for pipeline health and runbooks.
Data dictionary, mapping tables, runbooks, and onboarding materials.
Describe intake channel, triage criteria, prioritization, who approves, and typical timelines.
Target SLA from request to delivery for standard dashboard/analyses.
Has legal/privacy/security approved the access model and data flows?
PHI handling, retention, de-identification, and regulatory constraints.
How often the CDW governance/steering committee meets.
List up to three highest risks and the planned mitigations.
Concrete short-term actions to start or stabilize the CDW.
Select a number from 0 (not ready) to 10 (ready for production).
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