💭 Modernizing an EHR, Supporting EHR Transitions, and more

Hiya 👋

We’re back with another edition of the digital pharmacist digest!

Here are this week's links that are worth your time.

Thanks for reading,
Kevin

📖 What I'm reading

Modernizing a National Electronic Health Record: a Learning Health Care System Approach
💊📈 Patient Safety and 🩺💻 Health Informatics

"There are three specific areas where the type of deep analysis allowed by research can contribute to findings of traditional Patient Safety and IT sprint teams. First, we need to deepen our understanding of patient safety issues by developing a more systematic set of safety monitors and metrics that can be assessed proactively, rather than reactively.

Second, we need a stronger assessment of user experience and the role of training, with the aim of identifying the most valuable elements of training. This assessment must include identifying reliable approaches to minimize impacts on clinicians’ resilience. Already, researchers have begun to articulate mitigating factors, including the impact of local leadership engagement.

Third, we need to fully understand the implementation’s effect on provider productivity. This will help sites deploying the EHR plan for additional support during initial startup while clinicians spend time adjusting to the new system.

Beyond research, we must also recognize that new technologies and trends—artificial intelligence, patient-generated data, predictive analytics, and precision medicine to name a few—mean we must remain tightly focused on the EHR’s primary function: helping clinicians guide patients to the right treatment at the right time. Developing and scaling these innovations will be much easier with a single, consistent EHR platform. Moreover, innovations may help address “death by 1,000 clicks,” thereby allowing clinicians to spend more time listening to patients and less time at their keyboard. Finally, having more data will unlock new research avenues."

Harnessing the power of synthetic data in healthcare: innovation, application, and privacy
🩺💻 Health informatics

"Synthetic data has shown promise in finance and economics to improve risk assessment, portfolio optimization, and algorithmic trading. However, higher stakes, potential liabilities, and healthcare practitioner distrust make clinical use of synthetic data difficult. This paper explores the potential benefits and limitations of synthetic data in the healthcare analytics context. We begin with real-world healthcare applications of synthetic data that informs government policy, enhance data privacy, and augment datasets for predictive analytics. We then preview future applications of synthetic data in the emergent field of digital twin technology."

Practices Supporting Electronic Health Record Transitions: Lessons from Four US Healthcare Systems
💊📈 Patient Safety and 🩺💻 Health informatics

"Electronic health record (EHR) transitions are common and complex organizational changes, yet limited published literature is available to guide health systems that are changing from one EHR to another."

"Participants described specific organizational practices that they found most helpful in supporting EHR transitions, and these practices transcended individual sites and EHR systems. We categorized practices based on how they were described relative to the stage of implementation.

During pre-go-live, recommended practices included communicate rationale and anticipated outcomes of the EHR change; understand baseline workflows; and plan for appropriate customization.
During go-live, recommended practices included personalize training and support; invest in robust internal support; reduce workload expectations; and proactively address challenges.
The recommended post-go-live practice was to continue to invest in the change."

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