Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38249842›Full record

ArticleLearning health systems2024

Automated generation of comparator patients in the electronic medical record.

Joseph Rigdon, Brian Ostasiewski, Kamah Woelfel, Kimberly D Wiseman, Tim Hetherington, Stephen Downs, Marc Kowalkowski

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Learning health systems, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Joseph RigdonDepartment of Biostatistics and Data Science Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6265-0752
Brian OstasiewskiCenter for Biomedical Informatics Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0054-0192
Kamah WoelfelClinical and Translational Science Institute Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.
Kimberly D WisemanDepartment of Social Sciences and Health Policy Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.
Tim HetheringtonClinical and Translational Science Institute Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.
Stephen DownsCenter for Biomedical Informatics Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.
Marc KowalkowskiClinical and Translational Science Institute Wake Forest University School of Medicine Winston-Salem North Carolina USA.

Funding

Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science AwardUL1TR001420 · NCATS · WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · PI ARD, JAMY D, FOLEY, KRISTIE L · 2015 to 2023
$32.3M
NCATS NIH HHS UL1 TR001420
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Background: Well-designed randomized trials provide high-quality clinical evidence but are not always feasible or ethical. In their absence, the electronic medical record (EMR) presents a platform to conduct comparative effectiveness research, central to the emerging academic learning health system (aLHS) model. A barrier to realizing this vision is the lack of a process to efficiently generate a reference comparison group for each patient. Objective: To test a multi-step process for the selection of comparators in the EMR. Materials and Methods: We conducted a mixed-methods study within a large aLHS in North Carolina. We (1) created a list of 35 candidate variables; (2) surveyed 270 researchers to assess the importance of candidate variables; and (3) built consensus rankings around survey-identified variables (ie, importance scores >7) across two panels of 7-8 clinical research experts. Prioritized algorithm inputs were collected from the EMR and applied using a greedy matching technique. Feasibility was measured as the percentage of patients with 100 matched comparators and performance was measured via computational time and Euclidean distance. Results: Nine variables were selected: age, sex, race, ethnicity, body mass index, insurance status, smoking status, Charlson Comorbidity Index, and neighborhood percentage in poverty. The final process successfully generated 100 matched comparators for each of 1.8 million candidate patients, executed in less than 100 min for the majority of strata, and had average Euclidean distance 0.043. Conclusion: EMR-derived matching is feasible to implement across a diverse patient population and can provide a reproducible, efficient source of comparator data for observational studies, with additional testing in clinical research applications needed.

Indexed as

comparative effectiveness researchelectronic medical recordmatchingretrospective observational study

Identifiers

PMID38249842
PMCPMC10797581

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.