The National Institutes of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Wednesday said Medicare and Medicaid private health data will be used for autism research.

The partnership will help NIH to build a real-world data platform enabling advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records, and consumer wearables. CMS and NIH will start this partnership by establishing a data use agreement under CMS' Research Data Disclosure Program focused on Medicare and Medicaid enrollees with a diagnosis of autism.