Enhancement of Clinical and Research Activity with a Novel Electronic Medical Record System

Abstract

Purpose : Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are known to be useful tools in the daily clinical practice, but integration with the research activity is critical. We performed a retrospective observational study to evaluate the advantages of employment of a novel ophthalmological EMR platform (NIDEK nLIFE), customized for research purposes.

Methods : nLIFE system is designed to manage any subtype of ophthalmological visit, tailored to the qualification of logging-in user. The software entirely runs on a web-based interface and is customized depending on the ophthalmologist subspecialty. nLIFE is equipped with a built-in alert system that warns for the potential patient eligibility in a specific trial. It also includes a structured-language field for diagnosis and treatment history classification, designed to ease the retrospective research of patients and/or diseases with specific characteristics of interest.
We analyzed the time to fulfill the target patient number of a sample of 10 research protocols that started 1 year before (June 2013-May 2014) and 10 protocols (matched for similar eligibility criteria) that started 1 year after nLIFE employment (June 2014-May 2015). Furthermore we calculated the proportion of studies that achieved the target number in the first 60 days. We also made a research simulation of candidate patients for all new protocols that are about to start in our clinic.

Results : Average time for completing the target patient number significantly reduced from 84±21 days to 49±12 days after nLIFE employment (p<0.0001). The proportion of studies that reached the target patient number in the first 60 days was superior in the post-nLIFE period (7 out of 10) compared to the pre-nLIFE period (2 out of 10) (p<0.0349). The research simulation of candidate patients with protocol-specific enrolment criteria exceeded the required target number for any tested protocol. Exceeding patient rate ranged from a minimum of 31% to a maximum of 119% (average 52%).

Conclusions : Despite general ophthalmological EMRs are commercially available since different years, the interconnection between clinical and research activity is critical. nLIFE system is a novel EMR platform customized on the ophthalmologist subspecialty that, beyond showing an effortless capacity to share data with other interfaces, demonstrated to be a useful and manageable tool for an integrated clinical and research workflow.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.