Improving Allergy Documentation and Clinical Decision Support in the EHR

NIH RePORTER · AHRQ · R01 · $388,680 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Abstract As the 6th leading chronic disease in the U.S., allergies affect 30% of adults and 40% of children. Adverse drug reactions occur in 1 in 4 outpatients and 1 in 5 inpatients. Many allergies and adverse reactions warrant documentation in the electronic health record (EHR) allergy section to inform future medical care and prescribing. It is critical to obtain a complete and accurate allergy history for each patient and to provide clinicians with an efficient allergy-alerting clinical decision support (CDS) tool. However, the allergy modules in most existing EHRs have serious limitations in how allergies are documented and drug allergy alerts are fired. These include: frequently missing documentation of reaction mechanism and type, lack of a comprehensive terminology subset for encoding diverse reactions, insufficient tools for reconciling allergy information, and physician alert fatigue resulting from an alert override rate of greater than 90%. In this study, we will provide solutions to these challenges by addressing the following specific aims: 1) improve reaction documentation by developing a comprehensive and interactive value set; 2) develop an innovative allergy reconciliation module within the EHR; 3) redesign drug allergy alerting mechanisms; and 4) distribute our methods and tools to healthcare institutions and the research community.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10143184
Project number
5R01HS025375-04
Recipient
BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL
Principal Investigator
Li Zhou
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
AHRQ
Fiscal year
2021
Award amount
$388,680
Award type
5
Project period
2018-05-07 → 2022-04-30