PFI: Collaborative Intelligent Health Information Systems Initiative

University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

This Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) project proposes to extend the efforts of the Knowledge-Based Nursing Initiative (KBNI) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee by building a knowledge retrieval and storage system that provides clinical evidence in a format usable by nurses through linking the language of research to the language of nursing practice. In addition, exploring semantic relationships in the evidence will generate new nursing knowledge that will have a positive impact on the safety of patients and the quality of health care delivery. Learning opportunities will be provided for a diverse pool of students from several disciplines and at all levels in order to inculcate the next generation of scientists and practitioners with the vision and skills to implement and maintain interdisciplinary and multi-sector translational research. Finally, by creating a collaborative interdisciplinary environment within academia and across the healthcare delivery, HIT (Health Information Technology) corporate and academic sectors; the rapid translation of health discoveries into the practice environment to improve quality and safety of patient care will be facilitated. This project uses a technology solution to address a heretofore largely unsolved problem, viz., expedient and efficient translation of relevant research to nursing practice. The translation problem for nursing will be accomplished through the efforts of a strong inter-disciplinary team of nursing, computer science, informatics, and management researchers and with multisector partners. The methods developed in this project may further be tested and applied to other areas of health care practice, particularly where there is a need for application of evidence from multiple domains, such as the practice of public health related to diseases of animals that can be transmitted to humans. There has been increasing regulatory and scientific attention to patient safety and quality in health care. There is the expectation that computer-aided clinical decision support will contribute to quality improvement and the reduction of medical errors. Underrepresented groups will benefit from changes to health practice engendered by this project, as the Knowledge Repository includes information about the gender and ethnicity of those who participated in the studies included. This will allow searches of the repository to identify the most relevant evidence for best-practices (or the lack of such evidence) for select under-represented groups. Partners: Partners include University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Lead Institution), Aurora Health Care, and Cerner Corporation.