New framework based on HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) gives Standards based access to EHR data to accelerate clinical research and digital trials
FAIRFAX, Va. — Vibrent Health, a health technology startup powering the future of precision health research, announced the integration of electronic health record (EHR) data into its Digital Health Solutions Platform, a platform that enables collection of health data from broad sources including biospecimens, genomics, environment, lifestyle and behavior, and wearable device data for clinical research and trials. Vibrent Health supports leading FHIR-enabled EHR vendors such as Epic and Cerner to ensure that their systems are seamlessly interoperable with the DHS Platform.
“Access to EHR data removes barriers to health research and offers researchers valuable insight,” explained Mark Begale, vice president, Vibrent Health. “Transparent, secure access to the full history of a participant’s medical record is key to gathering whole-person data which is essential to advancing precision medicine.”
Vibrent Health’s EHR integration tools were developed to support the National Institutes of Health’s 10-year, million-person All of Us Research Program, for which Vibrent Health serves as the Participant Technology Systems Center.
When a health research participant consents to sharing their EHR for research, Vibrent Health’s EHR tools enable researchers to access a wealth of health data via the DHS Platform. This data can include information about diagnoses, treatments, medications, lab results and other health-related information that can provide a fuller and more accurate picture of a research participant’s health than data that is collected by researchers manually.
“Our platform’s EHR integration is built using the emerging standard of HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) to give researchers the ability to access clinical records of various participants and combine that data with other data sources,” said Vibrent Health CEO Praduman “PJ” Jain. “Reusing data collected from participants’ clinical visits to health care providers helps to improve patient participation and provides the real-world evidence needed to accelerate health research.”
A major step to transformative precision medicine research, using EHR data in clinical research has the potential to bring new therapies to patients sooner and at lower cost. Access to data promises to improve safety, patient-centeredness, communication, education and equity.
“We regularly hear from researchers that they want to access this critical data, but the costs are simply too high. Easier access to EHR integration could be the key to making a scientific discovery,” said Begale.