Utilizing IHE-based Electronic Health Record Systems for Secondary Use

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Introduction and Objective

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have become increasingly important in recent years in modern health. The primary use of EHRs have become more widespread, and in order to take advantage of this surge for in the secondary field such as clinical research, it is essential to define requirements for the secondary use of EHR data. The purpose of this study was to further explore the use of health data for secondary purposes; and “to propose and evaluate an IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise)-based architecture for secondary use of EHR data for medical research, decision-making in health politics, and quality assurance." [1]

Methods

A deduction of eight core requirements for secondary use of EHR data was made from published literature. An analysis of the IHE profile MPQ (Multi-Patient Queires) was carried out. The architecture for patient-centered cross-domain document retrieval was examined.

Results

A proposal was made to establish an IHE-based architecture for patient-centered cross-domain secondary use of EHR data. The architecture was evaluated based on the eight core requirements and showed a positive outcome on six, and partial fulfillment of two requirements.

Discussion and Conclusion

The re-use of electronic health data in EHRs for research and other secondary fields hold great value for the future, hence further research in this area is essential.

My Comments

As the paper stated, EHR systems are an essential part of the modern healthcare system and it is necessary to carry out further research into methods to utilize clinical data from EHR for secondary use.

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References

  1. Holzer, K., & Gall, W. (2011). Utilizing IHE-based Electronic Health Record systems for secondary use. Methods of information in medicine, 50(4), 319.