The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s https://www.ahrq.hhs.gov, (AHRQ) Digital Healthcare Research (DHR) Program funds and supports 103 research grants and 8 contracts totaling $144.5 million.
AHRQ’s recent report Improving Healthcare: Through AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research (DHR) Program summarizes the impact that AHRQ funded research has on strengthening patient engagement, providing more support for clinicians to improve decision- making and patients care, and how best to improve the delivery of health services.
AHRQ’s DHR report contains information on research projects such as:
- MedStar Health Research Institute with funding of $1,483,876 studied how using mobile apps developed with standards allows for the smoother integration of Patient-Reported Outcomes (PRO) data into EHRs and how this will increase the use of PROs for clinical care, patient self-management, and health services research
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers with funding for $1,987,467, studied how enhancing an evidence-based electronic health intervention, Elder Tree with voice-controlled technology, can broaden its use and lead to improved overall health, and reduce hospital readmissions for older adults with multiple chronic conditions
- Johns Hopkins University researchers with funding for $1,963,619, studied how the development and implementation of an AI driven clinical decision support system can be used to detect and treat acute kidney injury in emergency departments in order to improve the quality of kidney care
- University of Washington researchers with funding for $2,000,000 studied how to standardize the hospital-to-skilled nursing facility transitions by using a structured handoff between clinical teams along with a pharmacist to monitor patient medications during the transition to improve care coordination and communication
- Indiana-Purdue University in Indianapolis researchers with funding of $1,143,378 to study how to integrate HIE data directly into EHRs to improve delivery of care and patient outcomes, as well as increase clinician satisfaction
AHRQ’s current research focuses on how to evolve post-pandemic patient care to ensure the highest quality of care, support for changes in payment regulations, and how to reduce health disparities that are currently present in the delivery of telehealth services.
Go to DigitalHealthcareResearch@ahrq.hhs.gov to provide comments or ask questions on the impact of all the funded research.