by Brooke Bunch

A project in its initial stages involving electronic medical records got an extra boost.

The Appalachian Regional Informatics Consortium (ARIC) Planning Project recently received an additional $100,000 from the discretionary funds of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health to implement a high-speed, fiber-optic backbone to connect providers, enabling larger files, such as X-rays, lab results and EKG readings to be transferred in a more timely fashion.

The unique project is a collaboration of diverse organizations, which includes OU-COM, the College of Health and Human Services, Edison Biotechnology Institute, Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services, Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, Doctors Hospital of Nelsonville, Health Recovery Services, O’Bleness Memorial Hospital, Southern Consortium for Children, Tri-County Mental Health and Counseling Services, and University Medical Associates.

The money is in addition to a $275,119 grant from NLM, which was awarded to fund development of an electronic medical records system for doctors in the Appalachian region — Athens, Hocking and Vinton counties. ARIC hopes facilitate improved patient care in Southeastern Ohio — a key part of which is the reduction of medical errors — as well as control operating costs and promote academic research on rural medicine.

“The $100,000 was a nice surprise,” says Brian Phillips, the college’s chief information officer. Phillips is one of the co-authors of the grant and a principal investigator.

“It will be used for the installation of a high-speed, fiber-optic link between OU-COM, O’Bleness and the Athens campus of Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare.”

“Our ultimate goal is to achieve better patient care,” Phillips says of the electronic medical records systems project.

According to Phillips, similar systems are set up in only 12 percent of practices.

“No consortiums provide this type of system, and certainly not in rural areas,” he says. “We’re the first to receive funding.”

Phillips says they hope to receive an additional $1.6 million in the coming year to begin implementation. The system should be mature in 10 years if all the goals are achieved.