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. 2009 Dec;78(12):e13-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2009.05.002. Epub 2009 Jun 27.

Enhanced identification of eligibility for depression research using an electronic medical record search engine

Lisa Seyfried  1 , David A Hanauer, Donald Nease, Rashad Albeiruti, Janet Kavanagh, Helen C Kales
Affiliations

Enhanced identification of eligibility for depression research using an electronic medical record search engine

Lisa Seyfried et al. Int J Med Inform. 2009 Dec.

Abstract

Purpose: Electronic medical records (EMRs) have become part of daily practice for many physicians. Attempts have been made to apply electronic search engine technology to speed EMR review. This was a prospective, observational study to compare the speed and clinical accuracy of a medical record search engine vs. manual review of the EMR.

Methods: Three raters reviewed 49 cases in the EMR to screen for eligibility in a depression study using the electronic medical record search engine (EMERSE). One week later raters received a scrambled set of the same patients including 9 distractor cases, and used manual EMR review to determine eligibility. For both methods, accuracy was assessed for the original 49 cases by comparison with a gold standard rater.

Results: Use of EMERSE resulted in considerable time savings; chart reviews using EMERSE were significantly faster than traditional manual review (p=0.03). The percent agreement of raters with the gold standard (e.g. concurrent validity) using either EMERSE or manual review was not significantly different.

Conclusions: Using a search engine optimized for finding clinical information in the free-text sections of the EMR can provide significant time savings while preserving clinical accuracy. The major power of this search engine is not from a more advanced and sophisticated search algorithm, but rather from a user interface designed explicitly to help users search the entire medical record in a way that protects health information.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. EMERSE Screenshots
1a) Screenshot of a search using the search bundle. This high-level view displays the a clinical “heat map” with rows representing individual patients and columns representing various document types in the EMR. Color coded cells represent areas with search term “hits”, the darker cells representing more “hits”. Black bars were added to the figure to cover patient identifiers in order to maintain confidentiality. 1b) Screenshot of an individual document. Users can click on the heat map in Figure 1a to drill down to specific documents. Relevant search terms are highlighted and color-coded in the document to allow for rapid visual identification of search terms.
Figure 1
Figure 1. EMERSE Screenshots
1a) Screenshot of a search using the search bundle. This high-level view displays the a clinical “heat map” with rows representing individual patients and columns representing various document types in the EMR. Color coded cells represent areas with search term “hits”, the darker cells representing more “hits”. Black bars were added to the figure to cover patient identifiers in order to maintain confidentiality. 1b) Screenshot of an individual document. Users can click on the heat map in Figure 1a to drill down to specific documents. Relevant search terms are highlighted and color-coded in the document to allow for rapid visual identification of search terms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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