Mining electronic health records: towards better research applications and clinical care

Nat Rev Genet. 2012 May 2;13(6):395-405. doi: 10.1038/nrg3208.

Abstract

Clinical data describing the phenotypes and treatment of patients represents an underused data source that has much greater research potential than is currently realized. Mining of electronic health records (EHRs) has the potential for establishing new patient-stratification principles and for revealing unknown disease correlations. Integrating EHR data with genetic data will also give a finer understanding of genotype-phenotype relationships. However, a broad range of ethical, legal and technical reasons currently hinder the systematic deposition of these data in EHRs and their mining. Here, we consider the potential for furthering medical research and clinical care using EHR data and the challenges that must be overcome before this is a reality.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Biomedical Research / methods*
  • Biomedical Research / standards
  • Electronic Health Records / statistics & numerical data*
  • Genetic Association Studies / methods
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination / methods
  • Medical Records Systems, Computerized / statistics & numerical data*
  • Patient Care / methods*
  • Patient Care / standards
  • Primary Health Care / methods
  • Primary Health Care / standards
  • Public Health / methods
  • Public Health / standards