Data In Once

ImproveCareNow Network Director, Dr. Richard Colletti, announced that on Wednesday March 27, the first electronic data transfer was performed successfully.  ImproveCareNow data from the Electronic Health Record (Epic) at Vermont Children’s Hospital was successfully transferred electronically to the ImproveCareNow registry (ICN2).

The data had been entered by the pediatric gastroenterologists and nurse practitioners as part of clinic visits using an IBD SmartForm specifically designed to have extractable data elements needed for ICN2.  The data was then extracted and transferred to ICN2.  Going forward, Vermont will continue to transfer data electronically.  Read more about electronic data transfer and the ICN2 registry in an article by Keith Marsolo, PhD - Director of Software Development and Data Warehouse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

This is a major milestone in the Network's plans to enable all ImproveCareNow centers to have electronic data transfer, eliminating the need for manual data entry of numerous data elements, reducing the time and cost of data entry, and improving the completeness and accuracy of the data.

All ImproveCareNow centers who use the Epic IBD SmartForm for data collection can now utilize the electronic data transfer process.  The IBD SmartForm is accessible in all Epic systems.  The Network is prepared to help all centers using Epic to access, configure and clinically use the IBD SmartForm as soon as possible.

ImproveCareNow is also working with other EHR companies—Cerner and Centricity now, and Allscripts soon—to develop similar forms that will collect extractable data necessary for electronic data transfer to ICN2.  These 4 companies serve 80% of the centers in ImproveCareNow.

Thanks and congratulations to Keith Marsolo and the team at Biomedical Informatics at CCHMC for their unflagging commitment and success, and to all who have envisioned and worked to bring this to fruition.

We’ve taken our first step—we are ready and eager to work for and with our care centers as we dash into the future of model IBD care.