Great Lakes Health Electronic Health Record to support clinical research at Kaleida, UBMD and ECMC

Great Lakes Health clinical institutions are adopting a single patient record using a common EHR – Cerner – over the next five years, which will advance data-driven clinical trials recruitment and clinical research. A September 27 workshop, hosted by UB’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, brought together investigators, practitioners, medical faculty and students, and informatics scholars from UB, Kaleida Health System and Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) to learn about the new EHR and associated systems and modules for clinical research and observational research informatics.

The common EHR, which will be accessible to providers at all Great Lakes Health System facilities, including Kaleida’s hospitals and affiliates, ECMC and all UBMD practices, first and foremost will improve patient care and care coordination by making comprehensive clinical information available at the point of care. In addition, there will be tremendous benefits for researchers who, once the common EHR is fully implemented, will have access to de-identified information from across Great Lakes Health to determine feasibility and project enrollment for research purposes.

“Clinical trials are how patients get access to the best science there is. By having more information in one place, we will be able to dramatically increase the number of clinical trials we can offer,” explains Peter Winkelstein, MD, executive director of UB’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics, professor of pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, and chief medical informatics officer for Great Lakes Health. Cerner provides a suite of products that support clinical trials management, screening, patient safety, recruitment, enrollment, billing and state-of-the-art data mining.

“Having a common EHR among Great Lakes Health institutions represents a transformational advance in healthcare and clinical research for our region. This achievement in collaboration and technology has enormous potential in increasing clinical research opportunities in the area, making available the latest advances in healthcare to our community,” according to Timothy F. Murphy, MD, director of the UB Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Rollout of the new Cerner EHR system is a major project that has many facets, such as incorporating existing EHR data (from multiple platforms) into the new system and establishing the flow of information between it and UB’s Clinical Trials Management System (Oncore).