HHS has published a formal notice and opened a 60-day public-comment period on a proposal to create a database of healthcare claims information for comparative-effectiveness research.

According to a posting in the Federal Register (PDF), the database project represents “a private/public partnership with the goal of consolidating access to longitudinal data on health services financed by both public and private payers to help facilitate” comparative-effectiveness research.

Data will be drawn “from multiple sources” to afford “adequate coverage of priority patient populations, less common medical conditions, healthcare interventions, and geographic areas,” the HHS statement said.

Comments are requested on the “necessity and utility of the proposed information collection” as well as “ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected” and “the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology to minimize the information collection burden.”

The database project is one of a number of comparative-effectiveness projects provided $1.1 billion in funding by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The database project will be managed by HHS.

Last year, HHS awarded a $16.3 million contract to Ingenix Public Sector Solutions, Rockville, Md., to build the database.