With growing adoption and use, the electronic health record (EHR) represents a rich source of clinical data that also offers many benefits for secondary use in biomedical research. Such benefits include access to a more comprehensive medical history, cost reductions, and increased efficiency in conducting research, as well as opportunities to evaluate new and expanded populations for sufficient statistical power. Existing work utilizing EHR data has uncovered some complexities and considerations for their use but, more importantly, has also generated practical lessons and solutions. Given an understanding of EHR data use in cardiovascular research, expanded adoption of this data source offers great potential to further transform the research landscape.