Integrating Data from EHRs to Enhance Clinical Decision Making: The Inflammatory Bowel Disease Case

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a constant growth of using electronic health records resulting in the availability of enormous amounts of patient information. Clinicians are unable to use this information effectively because of the lack of interoperability and standardization between systems as well as the overwhelming amount of irrelevant information. In this study, we propose a framework to support clinicians decision making by integrating data from different EHR systems in a common data warehouse and applying data mining techniques to retrieve useful knowledge from patients data. This knowledge is then integrated with clinical guidelines in clinical decision support systems to facilitate decision making. Our framework will enhance the use of patients data in decision making and to encourage the use of clinical guidelines and evidence based medicine.