Opportunities and Challenges in Use of Electronic Health Records in Health Services Research

Interactive Work in Progress Session.

Dr. Perzynski, together with Drs. Dalton, Dawson, Einstadter, Gunzler, Lewis, Roach, Rothberg & Taksler will be giving a symposium this Fall at the Society for Medical Decision Making meeting about research using electronic health records (EHRs). This special, two part seminar session is planned as an open and interactive discussion to energize our local research community in embracing our role as national leaders in research using EHR data. The past decade has seen dramatic advances in the adoption and implementation of EHRs and important gains in the analytic modelling of EHR data. Join together with experts from biostatistics, medicine, economics and sociology to discuss how investigators can make the most of EHR data in health services research. Institutions in Cleveland have nearly two decades of EHR data, representing tens of millions of patient encounters and several million unique patients. Challenges we might discuss could include: regulatory issues (e.g. data agreements, institutional review boards), data management and data quality concerns, tales of caution in the analysis of EHR data, and highlights from efforts to integrate data from multiple institutions with data from public sources (e.g. U.S Census, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Medicare Claims data). Can’t join us at MetroHealth on June 1st? Part 2 will be at Cleveland Clinic on June 8th.