This study will use a rules-based expert system embedded in an electronic health record (EHR) to extract, interpret, and present salient facts and recommendations related to the healthcare of premature infants.
Premature infants are a vulnerable population with multiple inter-related health problems that put them at risk for poor outcomes. Electronic health records capture large amounts of information that may help guide decisions, but existing alert and reminder-based clinical decision support (CDS) frameworks do not adequately apply multiple overlapping care guidelines to complex patient histories to produce coherent clinical recommendations. The primary objective of the study is to design and evaluate the usability of a CDS intervention to improve the quality of primary care for low birth weight (LBW) and very low birth weight (VLBW) premature infants from the time of intensive care nursery discharge through 24 months corrected gestational age
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
NONE
Enrollment
1,517
A clinical decision support tool embedded within Epic will appear for children with a history of prematurity at the intervention sites.
The Children's Hospital pf Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Evaluate usability of the intervention
Design and evaluation of the pre-implementation data-mining and expert system will employ usability methods from the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. The methods are based on the collection of quantitative and qualitative data where each method has specific metric-based goals that are to be achieved before the next phase. 10-20 clinicians, including attending physicians, nurse practitioners and nurses, from a single practice will be recruited to participate in the Usability Study.
Time frame: 12 months
Evaluate effect on care process
The clinical decision support (CDS) intervention will be tested for correctness and usability prior to implementation. The effect on care processes will examine process outcomes in the following domains: (1) neonatal summary documentation; (2) growth and nutrition; (3) ophthalmology; (4) hearing, speech, and language; (5) development; (6) gastro-esophageal reflux; (7) broncho-pulmonary dysplasia; and (8) apnea of prematurity. The primary evaluation will examine the change in prevalence of these process outcomes between a 12 month pre-intervention phase and a 12 month intervention phase for bo
Time frame: 12 months
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