The quantity and variety of data available through electronic health records (EHRs) makes it possible to identify virtual cohorts for various clinical, pharmaceutical, or genetic studies, based on condition/disease phenotypes, treatments, and/or outcomes.
Several PQHS faculty members have developed processes to identify study cohorts and have tailored algorithms to extract relevant information from EHR systems. Active collaborations are underway – or research has recently been conducted – with clinical teams at University Hospitals, the Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and the Veterans’ Administration Northeast Ohio Healthcare System. PQHS faculty work in tandem with or advise clinical teams with these health systems, all affiliates of ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ School of Medicine.
The PQHS team is conducting research and/or advising on research in the areas of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s Disease and multiple sclerosis, neurological conditions including epilepsy, ophthalmological conditions including age-related macular degeneration (AMD), age-related cataract and Fuchs Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy (FECD), as well as several types of cancer and cancer precursors.
The promise of this work is to link phenotypes to genomic or other omics data to identify biomarkers useful in diagnosis and or treatments; to support clinical decision making through predicative analytics; to create more precise and personalized health care interventions; and to assess treatments against aggregated clinical outcomes through virtual clinical trials.
Research drawing on EHR data also makes larger population studies possible to identify effective clinical practices or social interventions, and may reveal intersections between economic, behavioral, environmental influences that may inform clinical care.
The PQHS team is also developing methods to cross reference health systems’ aggregated EHR data with public health incidence data by geography to inform allocation of resources by health systems or commercial or public payers.
Meet the team:
Jonathan L. Haines, PhD
Mary W. Sheldon MD Professor of Genomic Sciences
Chair, Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences
William S. Bush, PhD
Associate Professor
Dana C. Crawford, PhD
Associate Professor
Sudha K. Iyengar, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair for Research
Siran M. Koroukian, PhD
Associate Professor
Satya Sahoo, PhD
Associate Professor
Director, Health Informatics PhD Program