Analysis of Healthcare Data and Electronic Health Records
Welcome! Based on over a decade of experience conducting, teaching, and training in EHR research, I am thrilled to offer this free course in epidemiological analysis of EHR data.
This is an open access, online, asychronous graduate-level course that introduces participants to the concept of the electronic health record, insurance claims data, and healthcare delivery; discusses how these data can be used for research; and addresses the shortcomings of these data. After taking this course, participants will be able to design, conduct, and interpret studies performed using secondary data from the EHR and claims databases.
This course may be used as a self-paced reading course or a training requirement for an NIH (or equivalent) career development award. If you need a Letter of Support for an application or a Certificate of Completion after taking the course, please contact me before taking this course. I will need to charge a nominal fee for preparing the letter or the certificate as well as ensuring that all modules and exercises were completed. I also offer tutoring for all the material covered herein; please see the Consulting page for further details.
Course Materials
- Textbook. The materials in this course are built around my book, A Researcher's Guide to Using Electronic Health Records. Contact me for a discount!
- Articles. Additional readings in the form of peer-reviewed articles are provided via a link to PubMed.
- Software. You will have the opportunity to perform an epidemiologic analysis of real EHR data. No specific software is needed other than Microsoft Excel for this exercise. You will need to sign a DUA to obtain access to the EHR data (instructions found in the module).
- Understand what is meant by the electronic health record and insurance claims
- Define the architecture of the EHR including database systems
- Discuss clinical workflow and how clinicians interact with the EHR
- Enumerate the various data types found in the EHR
- Formulate a research question that uses EHR or insurance claims data
- Identify the pros and cons of EHR and claims data
- Work with real EHR data
- Define what is meant by EHR data quality, data completion, and patient catchment
- Create an analytic approach for working with EHR and claims data in a research study
- Connect theory to practice in terms of research case studies
- Module 1: The Technology.
- Module 2: The Clinician.
- Module 3: The Data.
- Module 4: The Epidemiology.
- Module 5: The Applications.
