About Nebraska Rural Health Connect
Nebraska Rural Health Connect (NE-RHC) is a rural health data and research network built through collaboration among rural communities, the Nebraska Rural Health Association, and the Great Plains IDeA-CTR. The NE-RHC network helps critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, researchers, and community partners work together on research and quality improvement that matter to rural Nebraska.
NE-RHC uses modern health data standards, including Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, or FHIR, to support secure data sharing for approved research and local feedback. By creating shared infrastructure, Nebraska Rural Health Connect helps rural health care organizations participate in research and data-driven improvement without needing to build these capabilities on their own.
Why It Matters
Rural hospitals, clinics, providers, patients, and community members bring essential knowledge about local health needs and care delivery realities. NE-RHC is designed so that rural priorities shape the research and quality improvement work from the beginning.
Rural communities are often underrepresented in large health data networks and clinical research. This limits the evidence available to guide care for rural patients. NE-RHC helps address this gap by creating a practical, rural-focused infrastructure for the responsible use of health data to support better research and care.
“Rural Health Connect is designed to serve as a digital conduit between rural communities and academic teams. In doing so, RHC will help expand cutting edge research across greater Nebraska while simultaneously reducing the burden many providers and facilities historically face when participating in bioscience and technology studies.“ -Jed Hansen, Executive Director, NeRHA.
What the Network Supports
- Research. The network can support rural cohort discovery, feasibility assessment, multisite observational studies, and future pragmatic research across participating rural health care organizations.
- Quality improvement. Participating sites may receive dashboards or reports that summarize local trends in quality measures, population characteristics, and care patterns to support local decision-making and performance improvement.
Building on Early Success
The NE-RHC network builds on prior FHIR implementation work with rural Nebraska health care organizations. Previous success stories include:
These examples show how rural health care organizations can use FHIR-based infrastructure to strengthen data access, reporting, and participation in broader research and improvement efforts.
How It Works
Participating rural health care organizations enter into appropriate data use agreements with the Nebraska Rural Health Association. Data sharing is governed through approved use cases, privacy and security controls, and defined access processes.
At a high level, participating sites connect clinical data using FHIR-based standards. Data are then prepared within a secure environment to support approved research and quality improvement activities. Depending on the use case, data may be organized into identified, limited, or deidentified datasets consistent with governance requirements.
Who Can Participate
- Rural health care organizations can participate as data partners, research partners, or quality improvement partners. Participating organizations may help identify rural health priorities, contribute data for approved use cases, receive site-specific feedback, and collaborate on projects aligned with local needs.
Researchers may work with NE-RHC to develop rural-relevant studies that align with network priorities and governance requirements. The network may support feasibility review, cohort discovery, and multisite research using rural clinical data.
What Makes Nebraska Rural Health Connect Different
The NE-RHC network is built around rural communities, rural health care organizations, the Nebraska Rural Health Association, and the Great Plains IDeA-CTR. Many research networks are led primarily by academic institutions, with rural sites participating only after a study has already been designed. Nebraska Rural Health Connect supports a more collaborative model in which rural priorities help guide the work from the outset.
The network is designed to strengthen rural participation in research, reduce technical burden for rural hospitals and clinics, return useful information to participating organizations, and create shared infrastructure for future studies and quality improvement.
Get Involved
NE-RHC is working with rural health care providers, hospitals, clinics, researchers, and community partners to expand rural research and quality improvement capacity across Nebraska.
For more information, please contact:
Acknowledgement: The Nebraska Rural Health Connect network was partially supported by the Great Plains IDeA-CTR, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences under grant U54 GM115458. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.