scholarly journals Estimating Wisconsin Asthma Prevalence Using Clinical Electronic Health Records and Public Health Data

2014 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. e65-e73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie D. Tomasallo ◽  
Lawrence P. Hanrahan ◽  
Aman Tandias ◽  
Timothy S. Chang ◽  
Kelly J. Cowan ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nawar Shara ◽  
Kelley M. Anderson ◽  
Noor Falah ◽  
Maryam F. Ahmad ◽  
Darya Tavazoei ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Healthcare data are fragmenting as patients seek care from diverse sources. Consequently, patient care is negatively impacted by disparate health records. Machine learning (ML) offers a disruptive force in its ability to inform and improve patient care and outcomes [6]. However, the differences that exist in each individual’s health records, combined with the lack of health-data standards, in addition to systemic issues that render the data unreliable and that fail to create a single view of each patient, create challenges for ML. While these problems exist throughout healthcare, they are especially prevalent within maternal health, and exacerbate the maternal morbidity and mortality (MMM) crisis in the United States. OBJECTIVE Maternal patient records were extracted from the electronic health records (EHRs) of a large tertiary healthcare system and made into patient-specific, complete datasets through a systematic method so that a machine-learning-based (ML-based) risk-assessment algorithm could effectively identify maternal cardiovascular risk prior to evidence of diagnosis or intervention within the patient’s record. METHODS We outline the effort that was required to define the specifications of the computational systems, the dataset, and access to relevant systems, while ensuring data security, privacy laws, and policies were met. Data acquisition included the concatenation, anonymization, and normalization of health data across multiple EHRs in preparation for its use by a proprietary risk-stratification algorithm designed to establish patient-specific baselines to identify and establish cardiovascular risk based on deviations from the patient’s baselines to inform early interventions. RESULTS Patient records can be made actionable for the goal of effectively employing machine learning (ML), specifically to identify cardiovascular risk in pregnant patients. CONCLUSIONS Upon acquiring data, including the concatenation, anonymization, and normalization of said data across multiple EHRs, the use of a machine-learning-based (ML-based) tool can provide early identification of cardiovascular risk in pregnant patients. CLINICALTRIAL N/A


Author(s):  
Sebastian Porsdam Mann ◽  
Julian Savulescu ◽  
Barbara J. Sahakian

Advances in data science allow for sophisticated analysis of increasingly large datasets. In the medical context, large volumes of data collected for healthcare purposes are contained in electronic health records (EHRs). The real-life character and sheer amount of data contained in them make EHRs an attractive resource for public health and biomedical research. However, medical records contain sensitive information that could be misused by third parties. Medical confidentiality and respect for patients' privacy and autonomy protect patient data, barring access to health records unless consent is given by the data subject. This creates a situation in which much of the beneficial records-based research is prevented from being used or is seriously undermined, because the refusal of consent by some patients introduces a systematic deviation, known as selection bias, from a representative sample of the general population, thus distorting research findings. Although research exemptions for the requirement of informed consent exist, they are rarely used in practice due to concerns over liability and a general culture of caution. In this paper, we argue that the problem of research access to sensitive data can be understood as a tension between the medical duties of confidentiality and beneficence. We attempt to show that the requirement of informed consent is not appropriate for all kinds of records-based research by distinguishing studies involving minimal risk from those that feature moderate or greater risks. We argue that the duty of easy rescue—the principle that persons should benefit others when this can be done at no or minimal risk to themselves—grounds the removal of consent requirements for minimally risky records-based research. Drawing on this discussion, we propose a risk-adapted framework for the facilitation of ethical uses of health data for the benefit of society. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The ethical impact of data science’.


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