SBIR-STTR Award

Registries offer an important way to collect uniform data with a view toward understanding the etiology of diseases, and to improving their treatment. A major constraint in establishing registries is the cost of data acquisition, especially when not available from existing sources. The CDC SB EMR is a tool for collecting data on SB patients when they first visit a clinic and in each subsequent year. An ever-increasing number of hospitals and clinics are installing an electronic medical record (EMR) system. Non-integration of these separate systems poses a significant challenge for SB clinics: the requirement of double-enter data. One solution to this problem is to develop software that can extract data from EMR and legacy medical record software, and transport it to the CDC SB EMR for transmission to CDC for analysis. Such extraction software may facilitate additional SB clinics participation in the NBSPR. Further, given our approach of first developing a framework for extraction software, the same technology can be applied to build other registries. The existence of a generic EMR/legacy system extraction tool would permit improving the efficiency and effectiveness of other public health reporting systems, such as those of state and local health departments, by reducing the need for data entry and improving the accuracy of reported data.

Phase II goals will be to: 1. To develop a production version of an Integration toolkit (ITK) that can deployed at low cost to clinics using spina bifida EMR (to improve the efficiency of their participation in the NSBPR) 2. To pilot the ITK at selected SB-EMR clinics 3. To evaluate the impact of the production version of the ITK The ITK will be developed based on design principles & specifications identified in Phase I, and existing HL7 and other relevant standards. Traditional integration toolkits are used to transform, route clone & translate messages, and link disparate systems & data sources. The ITK developed in the SBIR contract would transform source data & capture additional data in a useable form for the target system, and thereby eliminate duplicate data entry. The successful deployment of the ITK to SB clinics can be expected to result in more cases being submitted to the NSBPR & the submission of more accurate & more timely data. Consequently and increased ability to evaluate the quality of care & effectiveness on interventions. The anticipated result of the project would be a tested & evaluated production version of the ITK.