A Search Engine for Heterogeneous Information Needs in the Clinical Workflow

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Modern clinical practices represent a prototypical information intensive distributed and collaborative environment where physicians struggle to find the right information at the right time to make effective clinical decisions The situation is exacerbated not only by federal guidelines and policies regarding compliance to clinical quality metrics and meaningful use but also by fragmented information networks of hospital information systems library resources and organizational intranet As a result physicians are often left with several unanswered questions that may affect the quality of care they provide to patients In this application we describe the deployment and evaluation of Search an electronic health record EHR integrated federated medical search engine that enables physicians to search filter and retrieve both clinical and organizational information at the point of care We will integrate Search into the EHR at University of Illinois Health Science System UI Health academic medical centers at Chicago and Rockford After deployment our preliminary evaluation will focus on pilot testing with a small group of physicians to fine tune Search for use at a large academic setting The purpose of this preliminary evaluation is to develop a consistent feedback loop to incorporate insights from users and also to fine tune Search within specific clinical domains and specialties The second phase of the evaluation will involve in depth analysis of search logs search patterns and search efficiency We will also conduct a user study with a sub group of physicians to characterize their interactions with Search and their perspectives on its use This multi phased evaluation will help us develop comprehensive insights on the deployment use sustainability and adoption of Search that can be translated for other commercial deployment efforts PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Access to information at the point of care can help clinicians in their decision making leading to potentially improved patient outcomes In this project we propose to expand on the results from a Phase I project by deploying MedSocketandapos s medical search engine Search in the Electronic Health Record of a large academic medical center A multi phased evaluation will be conducted to develop a consistent feedback loop to incorporate insights from clinicians and also to fine tune Search within specific clinical domains and specialties that can be translated for other commercial deployment efforts