Thanks to a FHIR-based app, physicians at Indiana University Health hospitals now have faster, easier access to information about the patients they are treating in the emergency department.
The CareView app, created in a partnership among Regenstrief Institute Indiana Health Information Exchange, IU Health and Indiana University School of Medicine, provides clinicians with only the most relevant information from a patient’s medical history related to the complaint that brought them to the hospital.
CareView has been in use in the emergency department at IU Health Methodist for about two years. Over the course of the development, the team has improved functionality and added features, including support for multiple conditions.
Its use has now expanded to include emergency departments at IU Health West, IU Health North and IU Health Saxony. The app will be rolled out to the remaining emergency departments in the IU Health system over the next nine months.
The app covers several conditions: chest pain, abdominal pain, headache, weakness and dizziness, back pain, pregnancy, heartbeat irregularities, and trouble breathing. These conditions account for about 40 percent of all visits to the emergency department at IU Health.
“There is an incredible amount of information available for most patients, but sifting through all of it to find the most crucial data can be very time consuming,” said Titus Schleyer, D.M.D., Ph.D., a Regenstrief research scientist and professor of biomedical informatics at IU School of Medicine, in a statement. “Clinicians could spend three to five minutes searching for data in a patient’s records. CareView cuts that time to less than 10 seconds, freeing up more time to interact with the patient.”
The CareView app is integrated into the EHR system. When the clinician selects a condition, such as chest pain, the app connects to the Indiana Network for Patient Care, the clinical data repository managed by the Indiana Health Information Exchange, and retrieves the patient’s test results, notes and other information most relevant to the complaint. CareView is a FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) app, which uses an application programming interface (API) to allow EHR systems to communicate with third-party applications using a common language.
“Before this app, providers had to leave the EHR and access the Indiana Network for Patient Care through a separate tool,” explained John Kansky, president and chief executive officer of IHIE, in a statement. “This eliminates the extra step. In addition, instead of sorting through every single health record, this app anticipates what the doctors are looking for and brings up only the most relevant information.”
Researchers hope it will improve patients’ outcomes as well as reduce costs, time and inconvenience by eliminating unnecessary tests and preventing readmissions to the hospital.
