National Research Network

 

80+

Members from over 50 organizations

 

The monthly NRN webinars are focused on these three topics:

• Research Topics and Funding (types of research questions well suited to audit log data, funding sources for audit log research)
• Research Methodologies and Skillsets (methodological/modeling approaches well suited to audit log data, skillsets of research team)
• Data Quality and Creating Meaningful Measures (accuracy, usefulness of data documentation, various levels of granularity, strategies for reducing noise/errors)

NRN Workgroups

In early 2019, the network convened 3 workgroups in response to the substantial heterogeneity in approaches to tackling similar issues and the many examples of different researchers and sites replicating the same foundational work. Each of the workgroups take on a different domain in which developing common methods and measures along with methodological guidance would be valuable. The workgroups include:

Developing a Framework to Characterize TASK TYPES

Task types workgroup has 19 members coming from 14 different institutions including academic and industrial medical centers, universities and EHR vendors. The goal of the workgroup is to develop a common framework incorporating informatics approaches and knowledge of clinical experts to learn task types which will be leveraged to characterize common clinical activities occurring in a variety of EHR systems. The anticipated output would be a task type catalog, within which, each task type has its own definition, affiliated clinical setting and a list of corresponding access actions that are commonly available in EHR log data.

Developing Measures Relevant to Audit Log Work

The audit log measures workgroup is addressing the lack of standardization for timings derived from audit logs.  The group includes researchers from diverse institutions including universities, healthcare centers, government, and industry. The goal of this workgroup is to produce a catalog of measures with definitions, validations, and applications across different medical settings, EHR vendors and EHR implementations.  We will be defining measures already included in the literature as well as creating definitions of new measures. Limitations and challenges for defining these measures will be documented as well as recommendations for improving their accuracy and reproducibility.

Developing Standards to Support Use of Audit Log Data to Characterize a Specific Use Case

The goal of this workgroup is to identify and leverage existing/emerging models, such as FHIR resources, to support log data standards-development around a use-case. The selected use-case is, “Characterizing patterns of EHR use across clinical departments and/or types of staff”. The group will discuss resources needed to address this use-case (e.g., Audit Events, Tasks, Practitioners), describe the metrics used with those resources (e.g., Login/Logout), address differences discovered in log data capture and meaning across systems (e.g., whether timestamps associated with Login/Logout represent the same event, such as a user-submit or an authentication), and propose the standards to address the use-case. The group will also describe limitations and challenges to developing standards across these resources and events, as well as future work needed to scale and extend them to additional use-cases.

Upcoming Presentations

Assessing Single Sign-On Authentication Behaviors to Inform Customized Solutions Using Audit Log Data – While Maintaining Privacy and Promoting Standards
October 9th, 2020: Jason Thomas

Past Presentations

Empowering Data-Driven Trainee Improvement: Interactions with the Electronic Health Record
Feb 8, 2019: Adam Dziorny and Mark Mai 

Recognition of Hospital Work System Strain through Knowledge Elicitation, Multi-Source Data Integration and Analysis
March 8, 2019: Dana Womack

Imaging Order Dwell Time
April 12, 2019: Nicholas Riley 

Leveraging EHR Audit Logs to Discover Effective Care Coordination Practice Patterns
May 10, 2019: You Chen 

NRN Workgroup Leads Report out on Workgroup Progress and AMIA Presentations
September 13, 2019

ASPE Burden Measurement Project
October 10, 2019: Genna Cohen, Llew Brown and Megan Fitzgerald of Mathematica

Monitoring EMR Accesses for Inappropriate Use
January 17th, 2020: Daniel Fabbri 

Documentation and Consumption of Social Needs Data in the EHR: Early Findings, Challenges, and Opportunities
February 28th, 2020: Michael Wang 

Characterizing Styles of Clinical Note Production
April 24th, 2020: Jen Gong