Grant: Operating Grant: SPOR iCT Rewarding Success - Travel Awards - NL

Over the last 20-30 years, there has been a huge shift from paper to computers for health record keeping. However, the time and money spent on computerization has not led to better patient health or a more efficient health system. In fact, many of these records are simply digital copies of paper forms. We can use technology to improve care delivery and health outcomes by programming our electronic health information systems to provide clinicians with patient-specific knowledge at appropriate times to enhance clinical decision-making. For example, our tool will provide information about insurance coverage at the time that prescriptions are being written, and will pull data from the pharmacy network to flag patients that are not taking their medications appropriately. The tool we develop with this grant will work seamlessly with electronic medical records and other health information tools in family physician and nurse practitioner offices, but will also be available to other providers such as specialists and diabetes educators. It can be hard to change the way physicians and nurse practitioners deliver care, so our tool will be developed to maximize adoption and benefit to the system. It will be created with end-user experience as a primary consideration and will offset increases in workload (e.g., alerts) by making other tasks such as chronic disease management and referrals to specialists more efficient. We will test the effectiveness of our system by randomizing physicians into a group that uses our tool, and one that continues to deliver care in the usual way. Patient outcomes such as improved control of diabetes and reduced symptoms of heart failure, and health system efficiency measures such as reductions in unnecessary referrals and medication prescribing will be compared between the groups.