Yale School of Medicine has received a two-year, $2.5 million contract from the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to boost the quality of physicians' healthcare delivery, especially in the area of chronic asthma and childhood obesity prevention in the United States.
The contract enables Yale physicians to use a computer technology called clinical decision support, which helps them make more informed patient care decisions. By inputting patient information into the system, physicians will be able to tailor their treatment.
Researchers — led by Dr. Richard Shiffman, professor of pediatrics and anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine — have partnered with Yale-New Haven Hospital and Nemours primary care and specialty practices in Florida and the Delaware Valley to implement the GLIDES Project (Guidelines Into Decision Support). This project will bring together representatives from primary and specialty care pediatrics, nursing, informatics, information systems, clinical administration, epidemiology and quality management.
Using models and software developed at the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, the team will extract knowledge from recently released national guidelines on management of chronic asthma and prevention of obesity in children.
According to Shiffman, this knowledge — which represents the best scientific evidence combined with the expertise and experience of national experts — will be translated into a format that computers can "understand" and brought to the point of care within electronic health record systems at Yale Medical Center and Nemours. Other investigators on the GLIDES Project will evaluate the effects on health and healthcare.
"The project will demonstrate how knowledge about best practices can be embedded within widely used electronic systems and establish lessons learned for guideline developers and the health IT vendor community," says Shiffman.
The GLIDES Project is part of a larger effort by AHRQ to integrate clinical decision support technologies into health care delivery. The research will assess potential benefits and drawbacks of clinical decision support services, including effects on patient satisfaction, measures of efficiency, cost and risk. Researchers also will evaluate methods of creating, storing and replicating clinical decision support elements across multiple clinical sites and ambulatory practices.
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has received a similar contract.
Contact
Office of Public Affairs & Communications
203-432-1345