A Must Read Contribution from Health Affairs

As a service to those who are not on the Health Affairs mailing list I pass on the following alert.

For the next week or so the articles will be accessible from the URL below. Enjoy and learn!

Health Affairs Online Theme Issue On Rapid Learning Through Health IT

Today Health Affairs has published online a set of papers that discuss using electronic data to advance knowledge. Data gathered in electronic health records on the experience of millions of patients have the potential to dramatically accelerate clinical research and provide the nation with timely, urgently needed knowledge about the value of new medical technologies, researchers report. You can access the set of papers at:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.26.2.w107/DC2

Highlights include:

Lynn Etheredge on what a rapid-learning system would look like and how we might get there.

David Eddy on how mathematical modeling can assist in medical decision making.

Sean Tunis et al. on the federal government’s unique position to generate information.

Joel Kupersmith et al. on the VHA’s electronic health records system.

Paul Wallace on integrated health IT at Kaiser Permanente.

Walter Stewart et al. on tools to help physicians bridge the gap between the knowledge they posses and the knowledge they do not.

Plus Perspectives from a wide range of system stakeholders.

This is important material that adds powerfully to the business case for the expanded implementation of Health IT both here and in the USA.

David.