Researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis received funding from AHRQ for $1,143,378 for the study “Improving Healthcare Processes and Outcomes by Directly Integrating HIE Data into the Clinical Workflow”.
Titus Schleyer, D.M.D. Ph.D, leading the study, reports that with the explosion of digital healthcare technologies, in theory, people’s health is more shareable, and therefore accessible. However, sometimes, the data needed to make critical decisions in urgent care settings is difficult to find.
Study research team are going to create a tool so that providers have the important information about a patient’s health history, especially in the Emergency Department (ED) setting where decisions need to be made quickly.
The researchers’ goal is to evaluate whether an HIE/EHR integration can be implemented using the application, called Health Dart which is able to incorporate relevant HIE information directly into the EHR in Emergency Departments.
To assess the impact of the Health Dart application, the research team will enroll 14 Indiana University EDs in a cluster non-randomized study design enabling each ED to serve as both a control and an intervention site.
By using Health Dart, it has been shown that a provider is able to reduce the search time for relevant information from about 4 minutes to 10 seconds with the number of clicks reduced from 50 down to 6 clicks.
The project being funded is one of AHRQ’s Health Services Research Projects. The grant number is (R01 HS027185) The research project began 9/30/20 and is scheduled to end 9/29/23.
Go to https://digital.ahrq.gov/annual-report-2021 for the AHRQ report: Improving Healthcare Through AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program.