Building Electronic Health Record Databases for Research

Abstract

This chapter presents information about the development and use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) Databases. There are petabytes of untapped research data hoarded within hospitals worldwide. There is enormous potential in the secondary analysis of this clinical data, leveraging data already collected in everyday medical practice, we could gain insight into the clinical decision-making process and it's impact on patient outcomes. In this chapter we outline a high-level overview of some of the important considerations when building clinical research databases. Keywords Electronic health records • Disease repositories • Data mapping • Data pipeline • Deidentification Learning ObjectivesThe main objectives include:• Understand the differences between traditional disease information repositories and EHR databases, and why they are useful • Review examples of current EHR clinical databases • Learn the necessary steps to develop an EHR clinical database