As big data use continues to increase in healthcare, electronic health records will need to evolve simultaneously, researchers from Northwestern University, Geisinger Health System and Mount Sinai School of Medicine write in a viewpoint recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Current EHRs, the authors say, are not built to handle the capacity of data created by current electronic medical tools, a problem that will only continue to grow as data access becomes easier.
“EHRs are designed to facilitate day-to-day patient care,” co-study author Justin Starren, chief of the division of health and biomedical informatics in the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says in an announcement. “EHRs are not designed to store large blocks of data that do not require rapid access, nor are they currently capable of integrating genomics clinical decision support.”
As a temporary solution until more advanced EHRs are developed, Starren and his colleagues suggest using auxiliary systems for the storage of data culled from what they call increasing ‘omics’ research efforts–studies focusing on genomics, epigenomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Groups like the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) consortium, they say, already are “bridging the chasm” by creating interoperable systems with the ability to integrate large-scale genomic data with clinical workflow.
es to increase in healthcare, electronic health records will need to evolve simultaneously, researchers from Northwestern University, Geisinger Health System and Mount Sinai School of Medicine write in a viewpoint recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Current EHRs, the authors say, are not built to handle the capacity of data created by current electronic medical tools, a problem that will only continue to grow as data access becomes easier.
“EHRs are designed to facilitate day-to-day patient care,” co-study author Justin Starren, chief of the division of health and biomedical informatics in the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says in an announcement. “EHRs are not designed to store large blocks of data that do not require rapid access, nor are they currently capable of integrating genomics clinical decision support.”
As a temporary solution until more advanced EHRs are developed, Starren and his colleagues suggest using auxiliary systems for the storage of data culled from what they call increasing ‘omics’ research efforts–studies focusing on genomics, epigenomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Groups like the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) consortium, they say, already are “bridging the chasm” by creating interoperable systems with the ability to integrate large-scale genomic data with clinical workflow.
