National Web-Based Teleconference:
Findings from the Evidence-Based Practice Centers for Health IT

This free 90-minute teleconference will provide an overview of three Health IT Portfolio-funded evidence-based reports developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPC).  The EPC reports are based on rigorous, comprehensive syntheses and analyses of the scientific literature.

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In this educational session, the National Resource Center for Health Information Technology (IT) features three internationally-renowned experts who will present results and findings from three EPC reports which highlight the state of the evidence on medication management using health IT, decision support tools, and consumer health informatics applications and their respective effect on the quality of care.  Details about these reports are available at the following Weblinks:

• Dr. Lobach, Enabling Health Care Decision Making through the Use of Health Information Technology (Health IT) at http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/tp/knowmgttp.htm
• Dr. McKibbon, Enabling Medication Management through Health IT at http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/tp/medmgttp.htm
• Dr. Gibbons, Impact of Consumer Health Informatics Applications at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32638/pdf/TOC.pdf

Date: July 20th, 2011
Time: 2:00 – 3:30 p.m., E.S.T.
Sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) National Resource Center for Health IT

Presenters:

• David F. Lobach, MD, PhD, MS, is Associate Professor and Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.  Dr. Lobach has additional faculty appointments in the Departments of Medicine and Ophthalmology at Duke, and he maintains a clinical practice in endocrinology and internal medicine.  Dr. Lobach is a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and of the American College of Physicians. He has served on several national advisory committees related to biomedical informatics including the committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) for the development of A National Roadmap for National Action on Clinical Decision Support and the ONC workgroup for establishing guidelines for the meaningful use of clinical decision support. Recent projects have focused on the creation and evaluation of centralized, scalable knowledge resources based on the Health Level 7 Decision Support Service Standard that can be used across multiple applications and by multiple disparate institutions.
• Ann McKibbon BSc, MLS, PhD, is Associate Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is also the director and developer of the MSc program in eHealth, now in its second year of operation. Dr. McKibbon’s background is in information sciences and her PhD is in medical informatics from the University of Pittsburgh (2005). She has been involved in producing information products and services for evidence-based medicine information tools for more than 25 years. Her research interests center on knowledge translation, systematic review production, information retrieval by clinicians, and interdisciplinary education. She has been recognized by the Medical Library Association as an important and influential educator.
• Michael Christopher Gibbons, MD, MPH, is Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute and Assistant Professor of Medicine, Public Health and Health Informatics at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Dr. Gibbons is a Healthcare Disparities and Urban Health expert.  His research focuses on the use of information technologies and consumer health informatics to improve healthcare disparities. Dr. Gibbons has been named a Health Disparities Scholar by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Gibbons work is leading the emergence of the field of Populomics. He is an advisor and expert consultant to several state and federal agencies and policymakers in the areas of urban health, eHealth, minority health and healthcare disparities. Dr. Gibbons obtained his medical degree from the University of Alabama. He completed his residency training in Preventive Medicine, fellowship training in General Surgery as well as in molecular oncology basic research.  He also earned a Master of Public Health degree focusing on health promotion among urban and disadvantaged populations from Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Lobach will present findings from the Duke EPC’s systematic examination of the literature pertaining to clinical decision support systems (CDSS) and knowledge management systems (KMS).  As a form of health IT, CDSS/KMS can serve as information tools to augment clinician decision-making with best practice guidelines and evidence directly at the point of care. Dr. Lobach will present the literature showing that there is now strong evidence demonstrating that CDSSs/KMSs are effective in improving health care process measures across diverse settings using both commercially and locally developed systems.

He will be followed by Dr. McKibbon who will present the effects of health IT on the five-phase medication management process of prescribing: order transmission, dispensing, administration and monitoring.  Focusing on existing systems, Dr. McKibbon will provide evidence regarding the effect of health IT on medication management; user groups and locations; system characteristics associated with purchase, implementation, and use; and areas of research strengths and gaps in evidence. This project is unique in that it aimed to unify the evidence about all aspects of health IT on medication management in one place. 

Lastly, Dr. Gibbons will review the evidence on the impact of consumer health informatics (CHI) applications on health outcomes.  Dr. Gibbons will outline the results from his EPC which found preliminary evidence that certain CHI tools may have a positive effect on select clinical outcomes. In addition, Dr. Gibbons will discuss research gaps and potential opportunities for CHI tools and applications to effectively engage consumers, enhance clinical interventions,  improve patient-centeredness, patient satisfaction, and clinical health outcomes.

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn how the use of health information technology can help optimize each phase of the medication management process and what the barriers to using them are.
2. Understand what is known regarding the clinical effectiveness of clinical decision support systems (CDSS) and knowledge management systems (KMS) across various outcome measures and venues.
3. Identify the nine features of CDSS that are associated with successful clinical implementations.
4. Understand the association between the use of consumer health informatics (CHI) applications and specific clinical outcomes.
5. Physicians will be able to describe how health information technology can be used to improve health care quality.
6. Physicians will be able to identify health information technology strategies to implement in their practice to improve health care decision making, support patient-centered care, and improve the quality and safety of medication management.

The Wisconsin Medical Society is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The Wisconsin Medical Society designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.