Understanding Emergency Room Visits for Nontraumatic Oral Health Conditions in a Hospital Serving Rural Appalachia: Dental Informatics Study.

Background: In the Appalachian region, a variety of factors will impact the ability of patients to maintain good oral health, which is essential for overall health and well-being. Oral health issues have led to high costs within the Appalachian hospital system. Dental informatics examines preventable dental conditions to understand the problem and suggest cost containment.

Fueling Clinical and Translational Research in Appalachia: Informatics Platform Approach.

Background: The Appalachian population is distinct, not just culturally and geographically but also in its health care needs, facing the most health care disparities in the United States. To meet these unique demands, Appalachian medical centers need an arsenal of analytics and data science tools with the foundation of a centralized data warehouse to transform health care data into actionable clinical interventions. However, this is an especially challenging task given the fragmented state of medical data within Appalachia and the need for integration of other types of data such as environmental, social, and economic with medical data.

Analysis of Benzodiazepine Prescription Practices in Elderly Appalachians with Dementia via the Appalachian Informatics Platform: Longitudinal Study.

Background: Caring for the growing dementia population with complex health care needs in West Virginia has been challenging due to its large, sizably rural-dwelling geriatric population and limited resource availability.

Objective: This paper aims to illustrate the application of an informatics platform to drive dementia research and quality care through a preliminary study of benzodiazepine (BZD) prescription patterns and its effects on health care use by geriatric patients.

Methods: The Maier Institute Data Mart, which contains clinical and billing data on patients aged 65 years and older (N=98,970) seen within our clinics and hospital, was created.

Team building: electronic management-clinical translational research (eM-CTR) systems.

Classical drug exposure: response studies in clinical pharmacology represent the quintessential prototype for Bench to Bedside-Clinical Translational Research. A fundamental premise of this approach is for a multidisciplinary team of researchers to design and execute complex, in-depth mechanistic studies conducted in relatively small groups of subjects. The infrastructure support for this genre of clinical research is not well-handled by scaling down of infrastructure used for large Phase III clinical trials.