BRIM Now Available as a New UCSF Research Data Service
Following a successful pilot, BRIM is now available as an AI-powered chart abstraction service for the UCSF research community.
Academic Research Services (ARS) has launched BRIM (developed by Brim Analytics and originating at Vanderbilt University) as a new research data service, providing UCSF researchers with a secure, centrally managed platform to transform unstructured electronic health record data into high-quality, structured, analyzable datasets.
Earlier this year, ARS introduced BRIM through a campus-wide pilot to evaluate its use of AI to assist with chart abstraction and clinical data curation. The pilot received an enthusiastic response from participating researchers. With support from our founding departmental partners - the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UCSF School of Pharmacy Graduate Programs in Drug Discovery - BRIM has now transitioned from pilot to production as an ongoing research service for the UCSF community.
Supporting Clinical Research with AI
Chart abstraction remains one of the most time-intensive components of many clinical research projects. Whether building research registries, conducting retrospective studies, or identifying patient cohorts, research teams often spend hundreds of hours manually reviewing clinical documentation.
BRIM helps accelerate these workflows by allowing researchers to:
- Define study-specific variables for abstraction
- Apply AI-assisted abstraction to clinical notes and structured data
- Review, validate, and refine AI-generated results
- Export structured datasets for downstream statistical analysis and reporting
Rather than replacing researcher's expertise, BRIM is designed around a human-in-the-loop workflow, giving investigators full visibility into AI-generated results while maintaining control over data quality.
Common Research Applications
BRIM supports a wide variety of clinical research activities, including:
- Clinical research chart abstraction
- Registry development and maintenance
- Cohort identification and feasibility analysis
- Retrospective studies using unstructured clinical notes
Because BRIM is hosted and managed as part of UCSF Information Commons ecosystem, researchers can use the platform without developing their own AI infrastructure or custom abstraction workflows.
A Sustainable Institutional Service
The transition from pilot to production establishes BRIM as a sustainable research service supported by Academic Research Services.
Researchers can access BRIM through:
- Individual subscriptions ($200 per user for six months)
- Department-sponsored subscriptions for eligible researchers in participating departments
- Pilot projects for researchers who would like to evaluate BRIM before subscribing
After obtaining BRIM access, each research project is registered with Information Commons so it can be configured for AI processing through the UCSF Versa API and associated with the appropriate billing account for LLM usage.
Subscription fees support software licensing, cloud infrastructure, onboarding, and user support, while AI processing costs are billed separately through each project's billing account.
Departmental Partners
Launching BRIM as an institutional service has been made possible through the support of UCSF departmental partners.
We gratefully acknowledge the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UCSF School of Pharmacy Graduate Programs in Drug Discovery for sponsoring BRIM implementation during 2026-2027 fiscal year. Their investment provides BRIM access at no individual cost for eligible researchers within their organizations and helps reduce subscription costs for researchers across the broader UCSF community.
Departments interested in sponsoring BRIM access for their researchers are encouraged to contact the Information Commons team to learn more about partnership opportunities.
Get Started
Researchers interested in using BRIM can:
- Learn more on the UCSF BRIM Wiki (UCSF VPN required)
- Request a pilot project to evaluate BRIM
- Subscribe to the production BRIM service
Questions about BRIM, subscriptions, departmental sponsorship, or getting started?
Contact the Information Commons team at [email protected].
Questions about this article? Contact Academic Research Services (ARS)