Implementation and Evaluation at Northwestern Medicine of Shareable EHR Treatment Plans in support of Multi-Site Clinical Trials

Northwestern University At Chicago, Evanston IL

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center (LCC) at Northwestern University recognizes that implementation for clinical trial treatment plans in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an impediment to timely activation of clinical trials of all sources, including the NCTN. LCC clinical trial and informatics experts are poised to work with peers in other NCI-supported Cancer Centers to develop tools and standard processes to streamline and harmonize EHR treatment plan development for multi-site clinical trials. This effort will require the careful analysis of existing treatment plans to establish a common information model. The information model can be used to create a single instance of EHR treatment plans which can then be quickly adopted by participating sites for their local context. We plan to leverage the established partnerships within the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium and the proposed Big Ten Electronic Health Record Consortium for tackling this challenge in coordination with the NCI and with EHR vendors. Specifically, we will: (1) Analyze previous treatment plans to develop a global site-agnostic information model for representing EHR treatment plans in collaboration with the Big Ten-EHRC and to identify the attributes that are specific for implementation of EHR treatment plans at LCC and its largest clinical affiliate, Northwestern Medicine (NM); (2) Participate in the communal development of novel toolkits that expedite the activation of NCTN clinical trials using harmonized EHR implementation of treatment plans. This will be achieved by contribution of expert effort ? clinical trialists and informaticists ? towards technical development, and by piloting the implementation of global informatics artifacts in local LCC and NM systems; and (3) Prospectively validate this EHR treatment plan implementation both locally at NM and globally across the collaborating institutions.