Lessons learned in migrating from one commercial genetics clinical decision-making tool to another: Assessment of data integrity and utilization

Abstract

Purpose

Rapid advancements in information technology have greatly influenced clinicians’ engagement with patient data for health maintenance. The electronic health record often contains multiple ways to record risk factors and to identify patients at an elevated genetic risk for cancer. However, these variables exist in multiple forms and disparate locations in each commercial electronic health record solution resulting in significant variations in how family history or genetic data is codified. Furthermore, there is pressure to migrate from one commercial solution to another at times, prompting the need for a process ensuring data integrity during such a transition.

Methods

Between July and December 2023, the genetics team migrated a family history database from one commercial software solution to another. After the data migration of 13,000 patient records, we reviewed 500 randomly selected charts in both support tools to measure the rate of concordance of information transferred.

Results

A total of 461 patient charts were reviewed. Of these, 425 (92.2%) were noted to be concordant. Of the 36 charts that were discordant, 9 had incorrect genetic testing results entered, 19 had missing information, 5 charts contained data recorded on paper before 2017 (legacy data), and 3 had additional information transferred.

Conclusion

There was high data integrity after migration from one commercial software solution to another. Although these results can ease clinicians’ concerns after such support tool transitions, our effort also highlights areas for improvement in how family and patient genetic data are recorded and utilized for clinical care and research within an institution.