Overview:
Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) is an academic health center serving more than 275,000 patients annually. As a research institution as well as a healthcare provider, OHSU has traditionally relied upon advertising and personal physician networks to identify potential patients who might match the criteria for a clinical research trial. In any given study, this process might cost millions of dollars and take several years to identify an adequate number of patients.
A practicing family physician, Dr. Timothy Burdick also serves as OHSU’s Chief Clinical Informatics Officer. Dr. Burdick leads a team of informatics professionals to to leverage the power of OHSU’s EHR to more easily match patients with clinical researchers.
Outcome:
Through the work of the informatics team, OHSU can now query the EHR against a set of ideal parameters for research participants, and identify potential candidates with a high level of accuracy.
This new system also supports sending messages to upwards of 500 potentially qualified patients at a time through the patient portal, requesting their participation.
Lessons Learned:
Expanding the use of EHR beyond the clinical realm can yield substantial benefits for researchers, patients, and physicians, and can streamline the research subject identification process.