Enhancing EMERSE, the Electronic Medical Record Search Engine

The Electronic Medical Record Search Engine (EMERSE) is a software application developed by Dr. David Hanauer at the University of Michigan (UM) for the search and retrieval of free text electronic health record (EHR) documents in support of patient cohort discovery and recruitment for clinical trials and other research studies. Under the direction of Dr. Eric Durbin, the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center intends to collaborate as a subcontractor on Dr. Hanauer’s Reissue of PAR-13-294 Advanced Development of Informatics Technology (U24) grant application to the National Institutes of Health. As a subcontractor, the UK Markey Cancer Center intends to perform the following: (a) Develop and maintain virtual machine (VM) development and deployment platforms for software and database products (b) Install EMERSE, documenting and reporting any problems encountered to UM (c) Communicate challenges and help UM improve either the software itself or the documentation related to the installation. (d) Develop the regulatory/compliance infrastructure, including IRB approvals so that the tool can be deployed at a cancer-wide level if not beyond. And again provide feedback to UM so they can incorporate this knowledge into the "roadmap" they wish to develop to make it easier for future sites to adopt EMERSE. (e) Coordinate efforts with the UK CCTS to leverage existing infrastructure in place such the UK Enterprise Data Trust, REDCap and i2b2. Communicate document management experience and plans with UM. (f) Participate in the collaborative 'network' formed by UM to share experiences with the tool and discuss future features/functionality, etc. (g) PI to attend a yearly NIH Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) meeting. Travel sponsored by UM. (h) Help UM track usage metrics and survey users annually about their satisfaction, usability issues, desired functionality, etc. For this proposal, EMERSE will be implemented among five collaborating institutions according to a staggered schedule. The UK Markey Cancer Center will implement in Year 3. As a result, resource funding in Years 1, 2, 4, and 5 will be less than funding required in Year 3.