Posts Tagged ‘EMR’
American Medical Informatics Association – Clinical Research Informatics Summit
March 7, 2011
Heading to San Francisco for this AMIA meeting. Looking forward to the opportunity to present from the podium and poster session. Topics include:
- Development and Sustainability of an EHR-based Chronic Kidney Disease Registry
- REDCap – Characterizing the Rapid Adoption at a large Academic Health Center
- Design of a Registry Management Tool for EMR Data
- Research Recruitment in Anesthesia Using EMR Data
There will be many opportunities for networking. Hope to come home with lots of ideas.
Hash tag is #TBICRI11
Share and Enjoy
HIMSS 11 Meaningful Use – The Spirit of the Regulation
March 6, 2011
A nice interview with Dr. Harris, CIO of the Cleveland Clinic and President of the HIMSS board on following the spirit of meaningful use, not just the letter of the regulation to create a real sea change in health care.
From Hospital and Health Networks Daily blog.
Share and Enjoy
On the Bookshelf
February 13, 2011
While I read The Myths of Innovation as an eBook, my next three are all paperbacks:
- Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read by Stanislas Dehaene
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Healthcare Sector: From Idea to Funding to Launch by Luis G. Pareras, MD
- Keys to EMR/EHR Success: Selecting and Implementing an Electronic Medical Record by Ronald B. Sterling.
The last two are Greenbranch Publishing.
Watch for book reviews in the near future.
Share and Enjoy
Do EMRs Improve the Quality of Healthcare?
January 25, 2011
In a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the hypothesis that electronic medical records would improve quality was not borne out. However, what was not picked up by most news stories about the article was that the data was from 2005-2007, 4 years old during a period of rapid adoption of EMRs. An accompanying editorial titled “Clinical Decision Support and Rich Clinical Repositories: A Symbiotic Relationship“, is critical of the report stating, “This lack of effect of CDS [clinical decision support] on provider behavior was surprising given the strong effects previously reported in randomized controlled trials of these systems.” These critics note that most of the guidelines which are more likely to be followed are immunizations rather than medication use which the study focused on. In conclusion, the editorial writers from the National Library of Medicine state, “Only when EHRs carry rich repositories can we expect EHRs to reach their promise and CDS to have measurable effects on a broad range of quality measures at the national level.”
My conclusion is that the use of clinical decision support within EMRs can impact quality on a national level but that early implementation of EMRs may take time to demonstrate this impact.
Share and Enjoy
2010 Year in Review
December 24, 2010
It has been a year full of travel and accomplishments. Here is a month-by-month review:
- January – hosted Lucien Engelen and others from Radboud UMCN Hospital in the Netherlands at the Cleveland Clinic for two days on everything from the group practice model to innovation and patient experience in two days.
- February- vacation in Naples, Florida
- March – HIMSS 2010 in Atlanta presenting twice and AMIA Clinical Research Informatics Symposium presenting a poster. Also visited the Googleplex. Stopped in Salt Lake City for a day on the way home.
- April – Toronto for the -Â TAHSN Education Day for Healthcare Communicators – spoke on social media
- May - J. Boye Conference in Philadelphia – spoke on social media in healthcare and published my first article in iHealthbeat “Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends”
- June – Visited Washington, DC. Vacation and some consulting
- July – Attended the Leadership Institute of the Group on Information Leadership of the American Association of Medical Colleges in La Jolla, California for a week and became a fellow.
- August – brief vacation in Salt Lake City including the Bonneville Salt Flats
- September – Named a fellow in the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and named in a NIH grant on Risk Calculators
- October – Presented at Toledo (Ohio) Hospital on social media and attended the CTSAÂ Innovative Informatics for Clinical and Translational Researchers at the NIH. Did live tweeting while attending the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit.
- November – coauthor of an article on a disease registry in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and another prespectives piece in iHealthbeat on the secondary use of EMR data.
- December – Second article on the chronic kidney disease registry published. A positive editorial by a well known informaticists about the registry published
Looking forward to more in the coming year – conferences, presentations, publications.
Share and Enjoy
Editorial on Secondary Use of EMR Data
December 2, 2010
As a follow up to the recent article on the Cleveland Clinic Chronic Kidney Disease Registry, there is now an accompanying editorial by William Hersch of Oregon Health Sciences University titled: Electronic Health Records Facilitate Development of Disease Registries and More.  He states, “Their study shows that the quality of data in the registry is comparable to that of the data that would come from a much more labor-intensive and expensive process of human abstraction. This registry will be used for quality improvement, clinical research, and other important tasks. ”
He also makes good points about the importance of CPOE in the process as well as the benefits of secondary use or “reuse” of data.
Share and Enjoy
Secondary Use of EMR Data
December 1, 2010
Part of the value of EMRs is the secondary use of the rich clinical data. Quality studies are an obvious win. This week, a new article by Kaiser Permanente Medical Group used this data in one of several registries to analyze 80,000 Total Joint and 5000 ACL Reconstruction Procedures in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. The data was collected “through standardized documentation at the point of care” and “supplemented with existing administrative data from our electronic health records and other independent databases.” See the registry database structure here.
Also published this week is a second article from the Cleveland Clinic Chronic Kidney Disease Registry regarding the eGFR definition. This is another example utilizing these registries with secondary data for addressing significant issues in medicine.
The HIMSS Â 2011 conference will feature a symposium on secondary use of data as well.
Share and Enjoy
EMR Article Gets Positive Press
November 8, 2010
The article I coauthored in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Development and Validation of an Electronic Health Record–Based Chronic Kidney Disease Registry, received a nice press release from the American Society of Nephrology which was picked up by both medical and health IT news sources:
- Medscape: CKD Registry Could Help Physicians Improve Patient Care
- Healthcare IT News: EHR-based registry could transform chronic kidney disease care
- Healthcare Informatics: ??????Study: Kidney Disease Registry Could Help Patient Care
Blogs:
- Science Centric: Health registry could transform chronic kidney disease care
- Drugs-Expert: Chronic Kidney Disease Care Could be Transformed by Health Registry
I think that this registry is a model for others which utilize EMR data to study disease and potentially transform care.
Share and Enjoy
Personal Trifecta
November 4, 2010
One of the advantages of having a personal blog is not only expressing one’s opinions but also promoting accomplishments. I have been fortunate to have three in recent months:
- coauthorship on a major article on a disease registry from EMR data - Development and Validation of an Electronic Health Record–Based Chronic Kidney Disease Registry, Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Nov. 2010. Press Release:Health Registry Could Transform Chronic Kidney Disease Care
- named in an NIH grant: Refinement and Enhancement of a Web-Based Risk Calculator Deployment System
- named a Fellow in the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)
Also, I became a fellow in the Group for Information Resources of the American Association of Medical Colleges this summer and reviewed a grant for a Dutch organization. Great opportunities and challenges keep coming. A great year.
Share and Enjoy
Impact of Accelerating Technologies
September 23, 2010
Singularity University is teaching the importance of accelerating technologies. It is teaching its students “to take advantage of exponential growth trends in order to create global change.” Salim Ismail, CEO of SU points out that many startups turn into billion dollar businesses in ever shortening time frames, sometimes as little as two years. And he says that many of the technologies we are learning today will be outdated by the time they are completed.
How will we manage this accelerated growth in technology? Is there anyway to keep abreast of it? Will only rapid development approaches be successful in the near term? What about legacy systems (like many EMRs) which take years to upgrade? Maybe events like the upcoming Health 2.o Hackathon will be the real future of healthcare technology.
What the Singularity video here:

