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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.
For more information on the
project, visit
www.oucom.ohio.edu/aric.
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