PhD Student Douthit, Richesson and Docherty Submit AHRQ Health Services Dissertation Program Proposal

PhD Student Douthit, Richesson and Docherty Submit AHRQ Health Services Dissertation Program Proposal

Brian DouthitKudos to Brian Douthit, PhD student; and his faculty sponsors Rachel Richesson, associate professor; and Sharron Docherty, associate professor; and their entire team for the submission to the AHRQ Health Services Research Dissertation Program (R36) for a proposal entitled "A systematic approach for health app integration into electronic health records."  This proposal has requested funding for a nine-month period for a start date of Dec. 1, 2019.

Electronic applications (commonly referred to as “apps”) are increasingly being used in healthcare to collect pertinent data, deliver customized health interventions, and present relevant data, information, and knowledge to providers and patients. Apps also have the potential to expand the functionality and access of electronic health record (EHR) systems, enabling read and write capabilities and enhancing communication across the care team. However, relatively few apps can demonstrate true EHR integration in the form of receiving EHR data as part of the app functionality and writing new data from the app to the EHR. The proposed research will explore methods to understand and characterize the data requirements for apps to facilitate true integration with any EHR. We will use PCplanner, an evidence-based app which collects palliative care preferences of patient caretakers in the ICU and tracks patient needs assessments over time, as an exemplar to develop these methods.

The study will: 1) systematically identify data requirements and essential data quality metrics to support the integration of the PCPlanner app with the EHR, documenting clinical workflows, operational data definitions, and detailed build plan, and 2) Assess the feasibility of integrating PCPlanner into other EHRs by presenting the standardized workflow, build plan documents, and data quality assessments to other organizations to solicit feedback from structured interviews and surveys with clinical and systems experts. The resulting process will facilitate the scalability of EHR-integrated apps to enhance care delivery and patient outcomes.

 

Scroll back to top automatically