About This Project

Using HIPAA-compliant Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in Uganda, we will track HIV therapy retention and assess the outcomes of pre-exposure HIV prophylaxis. This will be a capacity building approach based on the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (PCORnet) Common Data Model as vehicle to share standardized data from an existing EMR system and patient portal. The lessons learned from this pilot will be extended to other relevant disease models and medical centers.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

In Uganda, there exists a significant amount of raw health information that could be useful to aid local health officials to track and adequately plan for long term health interventions. We intend to develop a capacity building approach based on the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (PCORnet) Common Data Model as vehicle to standardize data from existing electronic medical record systems and patient portals to models that can be used for research and epidemiological functions.

What is the significance of this project?

Demonstrating that standardizing exisitng clinical data into a research-friendly model can enable the rapid evaluation of retention of HIV treatment on viral loads as well as the outcomes of HIV prophylaxis on a cohort of patients will support the development of a framework to manage other communicable or non-communicable diseases. In addition, the development of a standardized approach to sharing and analyzing clinical data will enable health planners in Uganda to better manage and plan for the provision of care and services to the population.

What are the goals of the project?

The goals are: 1. To recruit pilot clinics/health systems that ideally have existing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system in strategic geographical regions of Uganda to participate in the study. 2. To implement the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Network (PCORnet) Common Data Model as vehicle to standardize data from existing EMR systems into usable research data. 3. To test the developed systems for capacity for longitudinal assessment of retention of HIV treatment or the outcomes of HIV prophylaxis. 4. To learn from the endeavor and build a handbook that describes reproducible systems and processes that can be applied elsewhere across the East African region and other sub Saharan countries.