2006 Healthcare Information Technology Conference - Keynote Session Description
"Evidence-based Medicine: From Research to Practice"
Friday, February 3, 2006 - 8:00am-4:00pm
Marriott
Hotel, Rt 128 & 3A (One Mall Road), Burlington, MA |
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Session Description - Keynote Address:
"Managing Evidence at the Speed of Change"
Closing the Gap Between Health Care Research and Practice |
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Medical discoveries are made every day, yet there is an evidence
gap in medicine and a lengthy wait before medical innovation is
adopted into practice, according to Tonya Hongsermeier, MD,
Corporate Director of Clinical Knowledge for Partners HealthCare
System, Inc.
Dr. Hongsermeier will discuss the current and future state of
translating medical evidence into practice as the keynote speaker
for the Consortium's 2006 Healthcare Information Technology Conference: "Evidence-based
Medicine: From Research to Practice" on Feb. 3, 2006, at the
Marriott Hotel in Burlington.
She has long been interested in how to make quality tangible in
health care and has found that technology is an enabler of knowledge.
Citing a study by Carolyn Clancy, MD, Director of the Agency for
Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), Dr. Hongsermeier said
that there is a 17-year innovation-to-adoption curve in health
care.
"This is a testimony to the challenge we face in the market," she
said. "There's information overload, and one result is that
clinicians sometimes forget things they should do. A second problem
is that the velocity of information processing required to make
safe clinical decisions is increasing. For example, clinicians
have to remember how drugs interact with other drugs or cause side
effects in patients on multiple medications."
Because computers sometimes "remember" detailed data
better than people do, they can help solve the problem of information
overload. For example, the computer can easily determine whether
two drugs taken together will have a deleterious effect or remind
physician and patient when a mammogram is due.
"We can leverage computers to our advantage, but what computers
don't do well is heuristic medicine," said Dr. Hongsermeier.
A computer doesn't know a patient's preferences or habits, nor
can it draw on a physician's experience in practice.
"The challenge in the marketplace is how to create an environment
that leverages the best of what computers offer and the best of
what the art of medicine offers," she said.
Dr. Hongsermeier sees the problem of information management growing
as genomics comes into play. While today there may be five variables
that might contraindicate the use of a drug for a particular patient,
when personalized medicine takes hold, there may be 1,000 different
tests indicating why that drug should not be prescribed.
"Here at Partners we're trying to build an infrastructure
to prepare for that day," she said.
Through a combination of leadership and knowledge-based systems,
Partners is working to overcome the 17-year curve between innovation
and implementation by using computers to address the following:
- Raise the knowledge base of clinicians
- Education
- Improved "just-in-time" access to clinical reference
knowledge
- Decision support integrated into the clinical workflow for
patients and clinicians alike, such as preventive reminders,
drug interaction checking and expert dosing
Most important to the success of such systems is developing an
infrastructure that ensures that knowledge is maintained and up
to date, said Dr. Hongsermeier. Partners has put knowledge management
tools in place to inventory clinical decision support knowledge
and encourage clinicians to collaborate virtually "so that
they can continuously review the knowledge in a way that doesn't
require them to break away from responsibilities and attend meetings."
For further information on any of our conferences and events,
please contact Jerilyn Heinold, Director of Education, via
e-mail. If you would like information on exhibiting opportunities
for this or other events, please contact Arleen Coletti, Director
of Member & Exhibiting Services via
e-mail or by phone (781)768-2512.
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