Improving Patient Outcome Data for Reserach through Seamless Integration of the PROMIS Toolkit into EHR Workflow

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) reflect the experience of health and healthcare as reported directly by the patient. There is increasing evidence that capturing PROs will be an essential component of quality measurement, quality improvement, and patient engagement in care and research. Current CMS proposals and plans include PRO-based performance measurement as part of value-based purchasing, and in payment programs for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). Similarly, incorporating PROs as part of clinical trials, is critical to determining whether treatments actually improve quality of live. Because of the dual role of PROs in both clinical quality projects and research, they represent an ideal target for dual-use software tools that span EHR and research domains. The University of Kentucky team will participate in this Collaborative Innovation Award, CTSA Program (X02) by implementing the PROMIS toolset utilizing the SMART on FHIR standard (led by Harvard), in UK Healthcare's EHR platform. In order to facilitate and contribute to this overall objective, we will 1. Participate in PROMIS working groups and contribute to architecture and implementation strategy development; 2. Offer test and technical evaluation feedback by piloting the implementation of SMART on FHIR in the ONC certified OpenEMR (http://www.open-emr.org) system. OpenEMR is a Free and Open Source electronic health records and medical practice management application. It is one of the most popular open source electronic medical records in use today; 3. Pilot the implementation of SMART on FHIR in UK Healthcare's EHR system; 4. Contribute to the development of technical manual, user guides and best practice document for the deployment of the PROMIS toolset.