Caveats for the use of operational electronic health record data in comparative effectiveness research

Med Care. 2013 Aug;51(8 Suppl 3):S30-7. doi: 10.1097/MLR.0b013e31829b1dbd.

Abstract

The growing amount of data in operational electronic health record systems provides unprecedented opportunity for its reuse for many tasks, including comparative effectiveness research. However, there are many caveats to the use of such data. Electronic health record data from clinical settings may be inaccurate, incomplete, transformed in ways that undermine their meaning, unrecoverable for research, of unknown provenance, of insufficient granularity, and incompatible with research protocols. However, the quantity and real-world nature of these data provide impetus for their use, and we develop a list of caveats to inform would-be users of such data as well as provide an informatics roadmap that aims to insure this opportunity to augment comparative effectiveness research can be best leveraged.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Comparative Effectiveness Research / organization & administration*
  • Comparative Effectiveness Research / standards
  • Data Collection / methods*
  • Data Collection / standards*
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical
  • Electronic Health Records / organization & administration*
  • Electronic Health Records / standards
  • Humans
  • Insurance Claim Review / organization & administration
  • Research Design / standards*