EHRs Centerpiece of Studies on Hypertension, Medication Use in Children.
Pediatric Research in Office Settings (PROS), the Academy’s practice-based research network, has received federal funding for a five-year $5million project to do pharmacoepidemiological studies using electronic health records (EHRs) from approximately 800,000 children across the country. The project builds on the PROS ePROS subnetwork, but also extends to noted EHR research collaborators at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Boston University, MetroHealth/Case Western Reserve University, and the American Academy of Family Physicians. PROS is the largest and most well established pediatric primary care network and now by adding the EHR information, the most innovative. CBMi serves as the data coordination and analysis center for this project drawing on the expertise of the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMi)’s data reporting and management group and the healthcare analytics experience of PolicyLab and the Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness (CPCE) Healthcare Analytics Unit. CHOP’s Pediatric Research Consortium (PERC) will be providing the data for the studies.
The study has been funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration Maternal and Child Health Bureau in collaboration with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The new über-network of EHR networks has been dubbed by one of the collaborators as “CER2,” which stands for “Comparative Effectiveness Research through Collaborative Electronic Reporting.” Working together, the CER2 collaborators will use EHR-based practice systems and other electronic data to conduct observational comparative effectiveness research on the long-term side effects of pharmaceutical treatments in children, including atypical antipsychotic medications, psychotropic medication polypharmacy, and the off-label asthma medications. In addition, the CER2 collaborators will also conduct investigations on the prevalence and management of pediatric hypertension, and will launch a trial of EHR-based clinical decision support in the management of elevated blood pressure.
Principal investigators of CER2 are PROS Director Richard C. “Mort” Wasserman, M.D., FAAP and Alexander G. Fiks, MD, MSCE of CHOP. Key collaborating investigators include Robert Grundmeier, M.D., FAAP (CHOP), William Adams, M.D. FAAP (Boston University), David Kaelber, M.D., FAAP (MetroHealth/Case Western Reserve), and Wilson Pace, M.D., FAAFP.
Read the full article from the November 2012 issue of AAP News here.
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