UTHealth faculty members develop epilepsy care management platform for physicians
GQ Zhang博士和马里兰州的Samden Lhatoo（左三）共同开发了表观缩影，并在Uthealth Biomedical Informatics的同事，Cui Tao，PhD和Licong Cui，博士学位。（Drew Donavan的照片）
In an effort to address physician burnout, researchers with UTHealth Houston have developed an informatics platform that helps doctors better streamline and manage the care of patients with epilepsy.
The Epilepsy Tracking and Optimized Management Engine (EpiToMe) was designed by a team of researchers that included GQ Zhang, PhD, vice president and chief data scientist for UTHealth Houston; Samden Lhatoo, MD, professor and the John P. and Kathrine G. McGovern Distinguished Chair in neurology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston; and Shiqiang Tao, PhD, assistant professor and assistant director for the Texas Institute for Restorative Neurotechnologies at UTHealth Houston. In February, they published an evaluation of EpiToMe in theJournal of Medical Internet Research.
“The burden of documenting care is a universally recognized phenomenon among physicians, from documenting the diagnosis to patient history, medications, management plan, billing, and so forth,” said Zhang, who is a professor in the Department of Neurology with McGovern Medical School, with secondary appointments in the School of Biomedical Informatics and the School of Public Health. “With this system, we can reduce that burden.”
直接导致医生仪表板w缩影ith four modules: reports, billing, statistics, and schedule. In the reports module, physicians can review and complete reports and deposit the reports to parent electronic health records (EHR) systems with one button click. After the reports are stored in the parent EHR, EpiToMe automatically pulls all billing-related information and displays it in a user-friendly style, allowing physicians to file the billing for a report with three to four clicks. The statistics module provides an overview of reports completed, documented, and filed by physicians, and the schedule module allows physicians to review their service schedules for the whole year.
该系统能够生成四种类型的报告：脑电图（EEG）报告，癫痫监测单元（EMU）阶段报告，EMU每日报告和引起潜力。它还具有患者跟踪界面的特征，该界面反映了癫痫护理和颜色编码的患者旅程中的14个可能步骤，以显示已完成的步骤，患者的当前状态以及仍然存在哪些步骤。
Epilepsy is the fourth-most common neurological disorder in the U.S. Approximately 3.4 million Americans have epilepsy, including 3 million adults and 470,000 children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“In our epilepsy clinics at UTHealth Houston, we probably see 200 to 300 patients weekly,” Lhatoo said. “An organized system like EpiToMe allows for systematic, standardized reporting and data collection, which could indirectly benefit many patients.”
EpiToMe is already assisting physicians at UTHealth Houston and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, like neurologist Katherine M.J. Harris, MD, who sees patients at UTHealth Neurosciences, a clinical practice of McGovern Medical School, where she is an assistant professor.
Before EpiToMe, Harris used a standard electronic health record system that required over 20 clicks to submit one bill for a single patient. With EpiToMe, she said the same process only requires three clicks per patient. Overall, the time Harris spends billing a group of patients has dropped significantly, from around 20 to 30 minutes to 2 to 3 minutes, and similar efficiency improvement is seen in all modules.
“If you multiply that by how many people we’re caring for, it really adds up,” Harris said. “When you have more time to spend with your patients, you can spend more time listening to their concerns and addressing all of their questions. It’s always better to not feel rushed.”
最终，张表示，他和Lhatoo正在努力使美国各地的其他EMU采用护理管理的缩影，并计划针对包括UT Health San Antonio在内的其他四家机构进行部署。张还计划扩大集成到系统的数据范围，并量身定制平台，以管理其他专业（例如中风和帕金森氏病）的护理。
“So far, this is the only system out there like this,” Zhang said. “Our goal is to tackle systemic medical records challenges for physicians.”