Abstract
Editors: Stefano Conti (
Medical Decision Making (MDM), an official journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making, encourages submissions for a special theme issue, or section, on the use of electronic health record (EHR) data in health decision research.
The use of EHR data in health and social research is widespread and will continue to grow and evolve. Researchers can facilitate that growth and evolution by sharing their experiences with EHR data—not just the results, but also the problems and solutions, as Rodriguez et al. 1 and Taksler et al. 2 have done. Which research questions can be addressed, and addressed well, with EHRs, and which cannot?3 Where are the signals strongest? Where is the noise greatest? What approaches work best to reduce the noise and discover the signal? Where do significant biases lie, and how can these be best reduced? What areas of improvement can be realistically identified to expand on their usefulness and reliability? What areas of application in health and health care decision making are or can be more productively informed by the use of EHRs?
EHRs remain a rich and promising longitudinal data source on patient-level characteristics with a great deal of potential, but a lot of thinking and work remains to be done to take full advantage of them to produce high-quality evidence that can advance medical care and decision making. MDM is interested in papers that can advance our understanding and thinking about the strengths and limitations of using EHR data in health decision research on subjects such as:
Critical reports investigating the usefulness, benefits, and limitations of using EHRs to address specific health policy questions or inform health care decision making;
Empirical papers evaluating the impact of EHR use to inform decision making by patients, clinicians, health care improvement programs, or health policy makers;
Exploration of the challenges that arise when using EHR data for research or for patient/clinician decision support (e.g., biases, confounding, heterogeneities, missing data);
Strategies for addressing the challenges of EHR data in decision making; and
Issues that arise in different national contexts related to any of the above.
Recently published articles that illustrate the editors’ interests are listed below. If you are unsure whether the work you have in mind would be appropriate, please do not hesitate to contact the issue editors, listed above.
All manuscripts are subject to MDM’s usual criteria and peer-review process, managed by MDM editors. There is no guarantee that any manuscripts submitted for the special issue will be accepted.