The center's EMR is split across a number of technology providers and broken down along ambulatory versus outpatient boundaries, not to mention the numerous specialty systems for oncology, pathology, and so on, said presenter Dr. Brian Kolowitz.
"These boundaries -- coupled with the less-than-ideal interoperability between health IT systems -- put a massive burden on the radiologist, who has to reconstruct a singular view of the patient across many systems," he told AuntMinnie.com. "Furthermore, the information contained within these systems is limited due to input censoring, is hard to find, and is not organized according to radiologist needs."
While the researchers knew that radiologists need this information to provide the highest quality of care, they wanted to get a better sense as to what was accessed and how often, how the need for this information relates to the clinical situation, and to what extent the information found was used in patient care. The medical center wanted to answer those questions as part of its plan to develop more "intelligent" IT systems through its Next Generation Imaging initiative, Kolowitz said.
"The results themselves may not be all that revolutionary, but sometimes the most obvious findings are the most interesting," he said. "We confirmed that the need for EMR data is critical, which may not be that surprising, but we also learned about interaction patterns that we're using to develop a model of usage."
The study is the tip of the iceberg for the research team, Kolowitz said.
"We're going to combine this model with other elements we haven't described yet in a big-data approach to develop more intelligent systems that, unlike others, do not try to predict needs but enhance experience for the radiologists and other clinicians," Kolowitz said. "Patient-centricity, value quantification, contextualization, and quality are key themes that drive our design of the Next Generation Imaging system, and EMR data is a critical piece of the larger puzzle."
Stop by this Tuesday afternoon session to learn more.
