AcademyHealth is pleased to announce a new partnership with RTI International, a leading non-profit research institute, aimed at building the evidence base for patient-centered clinical decision support by launching a new special section in AcademyHealth’s open access, peer-reviewed online journal eGEMs.
The new special section will build on RTI’s Patient-Centered Clinical Decision Support Learning Network. With funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Learning Network aims to build a community dedicated to developing and implementing solutions that leverage clinical decision support technology and patient-centered evidence to improve patients’ and providers’ care decisions. Clinical Decision Support, a process for enhancing health-related decisions and actions including software-based solutions, plays a critical role in making key patient-centered outcomes research findings accessible and actionable.
“While patient-centered outcomes research can give patients and providers the power to make more informed health decisions, there is a gap between those patient-centered research findings and their use in clinical care,” said Barry Blumenfeld, M.D., senior physician informaticist at RTI and principal investigator on the project. “With its open access status and its robust connection to electronic health data producers and users, eGEMs offers the ability to spread promising patient-centered approaches rapidly in a more open and transparent environment.”
The journal for electronic data and methods, eGEMs aims to accelerate research and quality improvement using electronic health data. Since its launch in 2013 as part of a multi-year AHRQ funded project at AcademyHealth, eGEMs has published more than 200 papers – with more than 180,000 downloads – all featuring cutting-edge work from leaders in the field.
“eGEMs fills a unique void in the academic publishing world, publishing practical lessons not often published in other journals. eGEMs papers are helping transform how health care is delivered by digging into the real-world lessons of those on the front lines,” said the journal’s executive editor, Paul Wallace, M.D. “We’re pleased to welcome this especially important perspective to our vibrant community of multi-disciplinary experts and authors all working to improve health and health care.”
The ongoing special section will disseminate innovative methods and strategies that advance the science of patient-centered clinical decision support from comparative effectiveness research, patient-centered outcomes research, and quality improvement studies using electronic health data and evidence. The journal anticipates opening the new section’s inaugural call for papers as early as next month. To recieve more information, sign up for the new section's mailing list here. For more information about eGEMs, visit www.egems.org