The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality plans to award $44 million in grants to improve electronic means for collecting data from clinical databases used in comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments.

The grants to researchers will support the use of electronic medical records systems, clinical registries and claims databases as part of an AHRQ program called Prospective Outcome Systems using Patient-specific Electronic data to Compare Tests and therapies (PROSPECT).

Up to five grants will fund projects designed to enhance data quality and expand the scale of electronic data used for comparative effectiveness research of clinical treatments in underserved populations.

AHRQ posted the information in a notice for applications.

The research projects will build on existing electronic databases to establish "broader, scalable and sustainable systems that enable the collection of longitudinal and comprehensive data across facilities," according to the notice published Dec. 8.

Applications for the three-year grants, which were funded under the health IT stimulus law, are due Jan. 20, 2010.

An accompanying application notice for a grant of $4 million will fund a series of meetings to identify challenges in conducting comparative effectiveness research using electronic data. The meetings will include researchers and experts in health IT and clinical registries.