Informatics as an Interventional Discipline
Published:
Title: Informatics as an Interventional Discipline
Date: 2020-10-16
Host: Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh
Speaker: Randi Foraker
Summary and thoughts:
Dr. Randi Foraker from the Washington University in St. Louis presented at this week’s colloquium on her work in informatics and it’s potential as an interventional discipline. At the Institute for Informatics at the university, her team is involved in developing, evaluating and deploying risk prediction models for cardiovascular diseases, specifically among cancer patients. While there are several models available to assess cardiovascular risk for patients, cancer survivors offer a unique cohort for analysis wherein the challenges faced are not accounted for by the traditional risk scores (such as RCRI). Dr. Foraker’s lab utilizes EHR data for risk prediction for cancer survivors but goes one step ahead by deploying models in prospective studies to assess real-time risk. The Automated Heart-Health Assessment (AHHA) study is designed to assess real-time cardiovascular health score measures and provide clinical decision support to providers at the clinics. The tool is to be deployed to keep track of health changes and risk factors is the cohort of cancer survivors as a group randomized trial. This will involve both provider- and patient-reported outcomes and risk factors. The overall aims of the study are to assess provider actions, patient outcomes and impact of implementation of the tool in the clinics. The study design is targeted to understand the role of informatics as an intervention in this specific study cohort.