Wolfram Data Summit: Lynn Etheredge, Director: Rapid Learning Project, George Washington University

Blogging today from the Wolfram Data Summit, Lynn Etheredge just wrapped up his presentation, quick overview is below, followed by my write up of the presentation:

A Rapid-Learning Health System: Using Electronic Health Records and Apps

Lynn Etheredge

Director, Rapid Learning Project, George Washington University

This talk will update progress toward a national rapid-learning health system, using tens of billions of dollars of public investment for electronic health records, patient registries, and learning networks. In particular, the talk will highlight a national apps strategy, via public policy and marketplace developments, as a creative new approach to collect many more data modules and to generate maximum benefits for many more users and uses. Specific references will likely be made to leading-edge developments such as the forthcoming Real-Time Oncology Network; the National Cardiovascular Research Infrastructure; an in-the-works National Quality Registry Network; and to selected National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Food and Drug Administration databases. The talk will also describe the evolving strategy of “rapid cycle” learning that will use ten billion dollars in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation funds to test, pilot, and roll out new research findings and best practices into the healthcare system as part of a continuous learning cycle.

Presentation Overview:

Lynn started by saying that the objective is to have a health system that learns as rapidly as possible about the best treatment for each patient. Lynn stated that he wants in silco research, or computerized databases and research networks to study many more patients, more research, share and move knowledge quicker. The goal would be to build a national database center to share research and explore questions in a matter of minutes or hours, as opposed to years or days in the current system. Lynn also said that it is important to build apps to get the data out of databases, share information and manage complex data.

After describing what the Rapid Learning Project is, he continued to provide an overview of the current climate. Lynn named dozens of initatives taking place, here are a few that I found pretty interesting:

• FDA sentinel network
• Development of a National EHR (Electronic Health Record) System
• National biobank/bio-repositotry
• NIH emerge network
• NIH Collaboratry with HM Research Network,
• VA “one million veterans”, EHR4CR (European universities & industry)

Lynn mentioned that many of the EHR networks that are being developed are moving slow and are fragmenting, not providing all the data that is necessary. Lynn stated that by combining EHR with an app, there will be much more usability of the data and the data will be manageable. Discussions have begin in government how we can regulate “health 2.0” and apps, Lynn believes that there is a lot of potential once the data is developed and becomes useful. He mentioned a few recent app challenges from the FDA and CDC, and believes that government has now realized that apps will play a very big role in the future of health care.

Lynn cautioned we are still at the very beginning of this process, but it is an exciting time to working on such innovative projects.

More from Wolfram Data Summit:

Wolfram Data Summit: Timothy Vaughan, PatientsLikeMe

Wolfram Data Summit, Thomas Lee of Sunlight Labs: Measuring Influence