Informatics to support the IOM Social and Behavioral Domains and Measures

Link: http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/24/jamia.ocv035

Hripcsak G, Forrest CB, Brennan PF, Stead WW.

J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2015 Apr 24. pii: ocv035. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocv035

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD

University of Wisconsin-Madison

William W. Stead, MD

Vanderbilt University

Consistent collection and use of social and behavioral determinants of health can improve clinical care, prevention and general health, patient satisfaction, research, and public health. A recent Institute of Medicine committee defined a panel of 11 domains and 12 measures to be included in electronic health records. Incorporating the panel into practice creates a number of informatics research opportunities as well as challenges. The informatics issues revolve around standardization, efficient collection and review, decision support, and support for research. The informatics community can aid the effort by simultaneously optimizing the collection of the selected measures while also partnering with social science researchers to develop and validate new sources of information about social and behavioral determinants of health.

Speaker’s Biography:

Patricia Flatley Brennan, RN, PhD, is the Lillian L. Moehlman Bascom Professor, School of Nursing and College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin. A recognized innovator in patient-facing computer technologies, Brennan has over 30 years’ experience in designing, deploying and evaluating computer systems for patient self care, including the ComputerLink, an electronic network designed to reduce isolation and improve self-care among home care patient; HeartCare, a WWW-based tailored information and communication service that helped home-dwelling cardiac patients recover faster, and with fewer symptoms and Project HealthDesign, a RWJ- funded initiative designed to stimulate the next generation of personal health records. Brennan leads the Living Environments Laboratory at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, where her vizHOME group uses virtual reality to explore the impact of household contexts on personal health information management. She is fellow of both the American Academy of Nursing (1991) and the American College of Medical Informatics (1993). Dr. Brennan was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2002, and in 2009 became an elected member of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Dr. William Stead is Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Chief Strategy Officer, McKesson Foundation Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. He leads strategy development for the medical center, facilitating structured decision making to achieve strategic goals, and concept development to nurture system innovation. Dr. Stead is a Founding Fellow of both the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Institute for Engineering in Biology and Medicine. He is a member of the Council of the Institute of Medicine, the Division Committee on Engineering and Physical Sciences of the National Research Council and the National Committee for Vital and Health Statistics of the Department of Health and Human Services.