The research benefits of One Chart

One Chart — the new electronic health record at UNMC, The Nebraska Medical Center, Bellevue Medical Center and the UNMC Physicians Clinics — has many benefits in clinical care.

But investigators and research coordinators will be pleased with the advantages the new system will have for research as well, said Chris Kratochvil, M.D., associate vice chancellor for clinical research and chief medical officer for UNeHealth.

“I think there will be a lot of enthusiasm as the research community learns what kind of features are available now, and the additional functionality coming down the road,” Dr. Kratochvil said.

Research specialist Courtney Kennedy facilitates the training and transition of campus personnel toward the use of One Chart for research. Dr. Kratochvil calls her a full-time “enterprise resource.”

Dr. Kratochvil, Kennedy and LuAnn Larson, manager of the Clinical Research Center, laid out several ways in which One Chart features will benefit research:

• Studies will be built into the electronic health record so One Chart has a record of the study.
  
• Once a patient is enrolled in a study, an “alert flag” is added to the header on his or her One Chart record, so providers are aware the patient is in a research study. Providers can find the study description, contact information and principal investigator (PI) and coordinator.
  
• If a patient enrolled in a study is admitted to the hospital or visits the ER, an alert is sent to the study’s PI and coordinator.
  
• Hospital, professional and grant billing will be done electronically within the system, streamlining the process.
  
• Future features will help recruit patients to clinical trials. When an eligible patient is seen by a provider for another reason, an alert can be programmed to pop up to indicate that this patient may qualify for a clinical trial. If the patient is interested, a message could be automatically sent to the PI and coordinator.

“Having all of this clinical data in one domain, much of it as discrete data elements, will be a tremendous resource to investigators pulling data out of the electronic health record,” Dr. Kratochvil said.

To sign up for classes to learn to build existing studies in One Chart and use the research features:

• Go to http://intranet.nebraskamed.com/ and select Learning Connection; or
  
• Contact the Learning Connection at 559-4260.