UTHealth Houston TMC Cosmos Users Group is inviting you to participate and submit a proposal for their first organized datathon using Epic Cosmos Data (UTCD2026)

What is Epic Cosmos? Epic Cosmos is a secure, HIPAA-limited dataset created by aggregating electronic health record data from a collaborative network of Epic health systems. It enables clinicians and researchers to:

• Ask large-scale health questions
• Discover trends and disparities in patient populations
• Develop tools that provide real-time insights at the point of care

Learn more about Epic Cosmos at https://cosmos.epic.com/. See example studies at https://www.epicresearch.org/.

What is the Cosmos Datathon?  The Datathon is an interactive event focused on leveraging this massive de-identified dataset—containing electronic health records data for more than 300 million unique patients covering different aspects or diagnosis, medications, procedures, laboratory results, some genomic data, and more —to answer important clinical and operational questions, and to innovate for patient care improvement. Each interdisciplinary team will have at least one data science user (will be assigned as needed) with access to the Epic Cosmos Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM) environment hosting tools including MSSQL, R, Python, VsCodium, GitLab, and wide range of packages and libraries that enable different statistical analysis and machine learning models developments including access to foundation models.

Why Should You Attend?

• Learn from Epic Cosmos experts joining us in person and your TMC peers.
• Collaborate across clinical, quality, research, and data roles.
• Gain hands-on experience navigating and analyzing real EHR data.
• Investigate clinical or operational challenges and generate new insights.
• Winners will have the chance to publish their research in peer-reviewed journals with publication fees covered.
• The first-place project will be highlighted at the Epic Cosmos Data Symposium during 2026 XGM / 2026 UGM.

Submission Guideline

To participate, submit a 1–2-page proposal in pdf format describing:

1. Your clinical research question or study objective.
2. Rationale and potential impact.
3. Proposed methods and key data elements.
4. Additional team members (up to 3 members), along with their roles. Data Science Users having access to Epic Cosmos will be matched to your team.

Cosmos Data Science Users interested in participation, please email your resume/CV and areas of expertise to UTCD2026@uth.tmc.edu to be matched to accepted proposals' teams.

Timeline:

             Submission deadline: January 25^th 11:59 pm CT

             Proposal acceptance &Teams Notification: February 2 ^nd, 2026

Venue

The Datathon will be held at UTHealth Houston McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics

7000 Fannin St. 6th floor

Houston, Texas

77030

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to UTCD2026@uth.tmc.edu