Electronic health record (EHR) systems are widely used in Europe and worldwide. These rich data sources can be used to address bottle necks in clinical trial design and, crucially, patient recruitment. However the lack of interoperability between EHR systems has traditionally limited the ability to efficiently combine the data across large populations for research analysis.
The EHR4CR project was launched in 2011 to develop a platform that can use de-identified data from hospital EHR systems, in full compliance with the ethical, regulatory and data protection policies and requirements of each participating country. The platform supports distributed querying to assist in clinical trials feasibility assessment and patient recruitment, and can connect securely to the data within multiple hospital EHR systems and clinical data warehouses across Europe.
The legacy of EHR4CR includes a not-for-profit organisation Health Data (i~HD), which develops and promotes best practices in the governance, quality, semantic interoperability and uses of health data, and InSite, a clinical research platform for building a network of hospitals open to data re-use for research. InSite has since been commercialised by Custodix and SME collaborator spin off (now merged with a US company TriNetX), and some pharma companies have contracted the platform to conduct clinical research studies using it.
What happened to the projects from IMI’s earliest years? This month, to celebrate our birthday, we're taking a look at 12 years of cutting-edge research and how it's left a mark on science and society #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #IMICarryTheTorch
— IMI (@IMI_JU) April 30, 2020
➡️ https://t.co/taWdAYznmD
EHR4CR has improved the design of patient-centric trials thanks to a platform that gives access to existing patient health records (EHRs). Non-profit @iHD_HealthData promotes the reuse of digital health data, a win for clinical research. #IMICarryTheTorch #TBT #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/OgUdtUaUCS
— IMI (@IMI_JU) April 30, 2020
InSite is a commercial spin off by @CustodixNV that came out of the IMI EHR4CR project. It uses #RealWorldData to help recruit for clinical trials. Higher recruitment = better clinical intelligence. #IMICarryTheTorch #TBT #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/6U4J3xAsFV
— IMI (@IMI_JU) April 30, 2020
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