Study: EMRs useful for testing prescription drug efficacy

Want a reason to feel less grumpy about your big EMR investment? Particularly if you work for an academic research institution, this may help. A new study has concluded that electronic medical records can be as effective as randomized clinical trials in evaluating drug efficacy.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, compared six previously completed randomized trials with 17 measured outcomes drawn from data in the United Kingdom's general practice research database. The UK database contains medical records for about eight million patients.

To make the comparison, the researchers looked at the prevalence of stroke, heart attack, other cardiovascular outcomes and death in the UK population, then looked at differences in the treated and untreated groups, using biostatistical methods to adjust for differences between the two groups.

After making such adjustments both before and during the study, researchers found no differences between the database outcomes and clinical trial outcomes. Researchers said that this suggests that large EMR databases could provide study groups reflective of a total population, not just those participating in clinical trials.

To learn more about the study:
- read this iHealthBeat piece

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