Use of EHRs data for clinical research: Historical progress and current applications.

The benefits of reusing EHR data for clinical research studies are numerous. They portend the opportunity to bring new therapies to patients sooner, potentially at a lower cost, and to accelerate learning health cycles-through faster data acquisition in clinical research studies. Metrics have proven that time can be saved, workflow and processes streamlined, and data quality increased significantly.

What the patient should order.

Open global standards, workflow integration profiles, and related processes have been developed through consensus-based procedures. Although these standards and profiles should be augmented with additional therapeutic area-based content standards, they are available now to enable the use of electronic health records to directly support clinical research concurrent with patient care. Improving the exchange of information and integrating workflow between research and health care are inherently necessary to accelerate the pace of informing clinical decisions based on current research findings and for an efficient, cost-effective health care system to improve the quality of patient care.