Practical research to benefit chronic disease patients
21 January 2010
An electronic patient record developed with HRB funding is helping to provide care for 1,000 people with epilepsy who attend Beaumont Hospital. It is intended to extend its use to manage care of epilepsy patients nationally and also to explore its potential in the management of a range of other chronic diseases.
The Electronic Patient Record (EPR) is a secure web based records system which improves both the quality and safety of care patients receive compared to traditional paper-based records. It allows one or more users to access and appraise the information at the same and in a variety of ways, irrespective of location.
For example;
- It can greatly reduce the time needed to review complex medical records taken over years when optimising anti-epileptic drug therapy.
- It supports the epilepsy nurse telephone advice line.
- It helps identify patients meeting the criteria for clinical research studies, and
- It greatly improves communication with referring clinicians.
The electronic patient record (EPR) developed by the Beaumont-based team in conjunction with Trinity College Dublin has been shown to provide a robust solution which can be extended to help link healthcare services to healthcare constituencies – patients and healthcare professionals at any location.
According to Enda Connolly, CEO at the Health Research Board
'This is an excellent example of cutting edge, patient-focused health research which benefits patients and improves the efficiency of health services. It really is a win-win situation for everyone and demonstrates the potential that investment in research and information systems together provide. Our failure to invest properly in research and information technology is preventing our health system from achieving its full potential.
At present, it is estimated, epilepsy affects up to 37,000 people in Ireland. A secure web-based EPR stored centrally can ensure patient information is available when and where needed so that clinicians at any location will have access to the same single record for an individual patient. This results in benefits such as speedy liaison across all sectors (community, primary care and hospital) and shared decision making in relation to an individual's care.
It is estimated that unnecessary admissions to Irish hospitals because of seizures and misdiagnosis of epilepsy currently costs the Irish Exchequer in the region of 7 million Euro a year. In addition there are further costs related to inappropriate use of Emergency Department resources and anti-epilepsy drug prescription.
A press release with further information is available from the Beaumont Hospital website at the link below.
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