BIG DATA
for the day when all that information is
available to analyze.
The 976-bed medical center has
achieved HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 EHR
implementation, with an EHR from Epic
Systems, Verona, Wis. The implementation included device integration from the
outset, using software from iSirona, Panama City, Fla. “If it has a port and produces
data, I want the data,” Jones says. Patient
monitors and ventilators were connected
first, and his staff is now working on integrating anesthesia devices.
More than 700 devices feed information
into the EHR, though nurses or physician
must validate it before it becomes a permanent part of the record.
The device integration has improved the
hospital’s ability to monitor the quality of
care. A recent study looked at how often
ICU patients had their vital signs validated
at least once an hour. A study in progress is
monitoring how well device data can pre-
dict whether ICU patients will crash, using
subtle signs like a small but steady increase
in pulse rate over several days. “If you can
compare that data with several other vari-
ables, you can predict patients who will
crash over time and continual tracking lets
the physicians highlight those patients,”
Jones says. “We’re using the data to see a
bigger picture.”
And the picture is likely to get bigger yet.
“One of our researches wanted to know if
we could get the ‘every minute’ look at the
data, and whether he could compare it to
the medication administration record to
see when a drug was given and what the
effects were,” Jones says. There’s no reason
why not, he adds: all it would take would
be an interface from the medical device
integration server directly to OSU’s data
warehouse.
“It wouldn’t be validated and you
couldn’t do clinical care with it, but with
a few standard deviations you could draw
research conclusions,” he says. “It’s such
discrete data that it would be really easy to
query it and combine it with other data in
the warehouse. It just makes sense.”
