Over a decade ago, an NJIT health care startup took up a daunting challenge: to train 5,000 primary care providers in the state to adopt electronic health record systems that would allow them to better track their patients, improve their quality of care and securely share information.
The federal government, which funded the $50 million effort, had identified cumbersome and sometimes illegible paper records as one of the health care system’s principal vulnerabilities. The group, NJ-HITEC, ultimately trained 6,500 providers. Years later, at the request of the state, a successor organization at NJIT is plugging a gap in that initiative: modernizing record-keeping systems for one of the most complex and vulnerable segments of the patient population — people with substance use disorders.
“This is a severely siloed system. The aim is to integrate it and enable interoperability so that facilities can share information,” notes Renu Tadepalli, who runs the program for the health care division of the university’s New Jersey Innovation Institute (NJII). A primary goal is to reduce opioid abuse, but treatment centers say their new systems also allow them to keep better track of patients’ overall health and to respond quickly to crises.
By connecting with the New Jersey Health Information Network, an electronic exchange of patient health information run by NJII, treatment centers receive alerts, for example, when a patient checks into a facility or a doctor orders a new prescription. To read the full story.