Overview
The growth of systems that capture and store electronic medical records is creating greater opportunity for historical data to inform the decision making processes of physicians. This field of research is known as evidence-based medicine. RENCI is collaborating with the department of psychiatry at Duke University to explore new ways to use visualization and analytical capabilities to enable evidence-based medicine.
Kenneth Gersing, M.D., medical director of information services at Duke University Medical Center, directs work on an electronic medical record system (EMRs) known as MindLinc. MindLinc-EMR is a widely used behavioral health EMR system containing data from more than 2.1 million patient encounters, making it the largest anonymous warehouse of psychiatric patient data in the U.S.
RENCI works with Gersing’s team to design a prototype clinical decision support tool called VisualDecisionLinc. The work focuses on three initiatives:
- Developing the best processes for selecting comparative populations. The researchers will use demographic information, case histories and diagnoses and treatment outcome data to help clinicians select comparative populations from the database that are most relevant to their patients.
- Creating a visual user interface to help in selecting the best treatment choices. Clinicians need to be able to find the important information in their datasets quickly and to view data in a way that is easy to analyze. Visualization and visual analytics techniques will be used to represent data and help reduce information overload caused by dealing with large volumes of data and facilitate the clinicians’ decision making process.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of VisualDecisionLinc in preparation for a larger-scale research implementation. After testing the tool with patients at Duke Hospital over the next two years, the researchers plan to use what they learn in larger-scale testing and deployment.
Overview
The growth of systems that capture and store electronic medical records is creating greater opportunity for historical data to inform the decision making processes of physicians. This field of research is known as evidence-based medicine. RENCI is collaborating with the department of psychiatry at Duke University to explore new ways to use visualization and analytical capabilities to enable evidence-based medicine.
Kenneth Gersing, M.D., medical director of information services at Duke University Medical Center, directs work on an electronic medical record system (EMRs) known as MindLinc. MindLinc-EMR is a widely used behavioral health EMR system containing data from more than 2.1 million patient encounters, making it the largest anonymous warehouse of psychiatric patient data in the U.S.
RENCI works with Gersing’s team to design a prototype clinical decision support tool called VisualDecisionLinc. The work focuses on three initiatives:
- Developing the best processes for selecting comparative populations. The researchers will use demographic information, case histories and diagnoses and treatment outcome data to help clinicians select comparative populations from the database that are most relevant to their patients.
- Creating a visual user interface to help in selecting the best treatment choices. Clinicians need to be able to find the important information in their datasets quickly and to view data in a way that is easy to analyze. Visualization and visual analytics techniques will be used to represent data and help reduce information overload caused by dealing with large volumes of data and facilitate the clinicians’ decision making process.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of VisualDecisionLinc in preparation for a larger-scale research implementation. After testing the tool with patients at Duke Hospital over the next two years, the researchers plan to use what they learn in larger-scale testing and deployment.
Funding
RENCI
Collaborators
Kenneth Gersing, M.D., department of psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center
Ricardo Pietrobon, M.D., department of surgery, Duke University Medical Center
Project Team
Ketan Mane, Project Lead
Chris Bizon
Phil Owen
Charles Schmitt
Links
MindLinc
Project Profile in Medical News Today
Project Profile in Newswise
