Using Existing Medical Records to Improve Long-Term Condition Management

Speaker: Jim Warren

Affiliation: Chair in Health Informatics, National Institute for Health Innovation (NIHI), University of Auckland

Time: Monday 17/03/2014 from 14:00 to 15:00

Venue: Access Grid UWS. Presented from Campbelltown (26.1.50), accessible from Parramatta (EB.1.32) and Penrith (Y239).

Abstract: Healthcare systems are increasingly electronic, and they lay down 'foot prints' that can be followed to infer the patterns of management for patients with long-term conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and related cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. The General Pratice electronic medical record (EMR) is a particularly rich resource in countries such as New Zealand and Australia where the GP keeps fairly comprehensive treatment records by computer. Among the clearest and most common trails in the EMR is a pattern of persistent long-term medication under-supply indicating poor medication adherence by patients with significant CVD risk. This presentation describes methods for long-term condition management inferences from GP EMRs and outlines efforts to use this data, and other existing EMR sources, in support of improving chronic condition management. The presentation features a case study of improving adherence to blood pressure medications for Pacific patients.

Biography: Jim Warren is Professor of Health Informatics at the University of Auckland. Based in the Department of Computer Science, he works closely with the University's School of Population Health and National Institute for Health Innovation. In 2008-2010 he served a term as Chair of Health Informatics New Zealand, the member body of the International Medical Informatics Association for New Zealanders. He is also a founding Fellow of the Australasian College of Health Informatics. Jim's primary research interest is in IT for chronic condition management, whether this is through improved `business intelligence' (or data mining), clinical decision support tools for health providers, or information systems to better empower health consumers in their own care. He has been interested in the question of how to get useful clinical quality improvement information out of general practice electronic medical records since the early 1990s, and increasingly he finds that gaps in supply of long-term medications, such as blood pressure medication, provide a particularly fruitful area of focus.