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Newman-Griffis D, Porcino J, Zirikly A, Thieu T, Camacho Maldonado J, Ho PS, Ding M, Chan L, Rasch E. Broadening horizons: the case for capturing function and the role of health informatics in its use. BMC Public Health 2019; 19:1288. [PMID: 31615472 PMCID: PMC6794808 DOI: 10.1186/s12889-019-7630-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/05/2018] [Accepted: 09/16/2019] [Indexed: 12/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Human activity and the interaction between health conditions and activity is a critical part of understanding the overall function of individuals. The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) models function as all aspects of an individual’s interaction with the world, including organismal concepts such as individual body structures, functions, and pathologies, as well as the outcomes of the individual’s interaction with their environment, referred to as activity and participation. Function, particularly activity and participation outcomes, is an important indicator of health at both the level of an individual and the population level, as it is highly correlated with quality of life and a critical component of identifying resource needs. Since it reflects the cumulative impact of health conditions on individuals and is not disease specific, its use as a health indicator helps to address major barriers to holistic, patient-centered care that result from multiple, and often competing, disease specific interventions. While the need for better information on function has been widely endorsed, this has not translated into its routine incorporation into modern health systems. Purpose We present the importance of capturing information on activity as a core component of modern health systems and identify specific steps and analytic methods that can be used to make it more available to utilize in improving patient care. We identify challenges in the use of activity and participation information, such as a lack of consistent documentation and diversity of data specificity and representation across providers, health systems, and national surveys. We describe how activity and participation information can be more effectively captured, and how health informatics methodologies, including natural language processing (NLP), can enable automatically locating, extracting, and organizing this information on a large scale, supporting standardization and utilization with minimal additional provider burden. We examine the analytic requirements and potential challenges of capturing this information with informatics, and describe how data-driven techniques can combine with common standards and documentation practices to make activity and participation information standardized and accessible for improving patient care. Recommendations We recommend four specific actions to improve the capture and analysis of activity and participation information throughout the continuum of care: (1) make activity and participation annotation standards and datasets available to the broader research community; (2) define common research problems in automatically processing activity and participation information; (3) develop robust, machine-readable ontologies for function that describe the components of activity and participation information and their relationships; and (4) establish standards for how and when to document activity and participation status during clinical encounters. We further provide specific short-term goals to make significant progress in each of these areas within a reasonable time frame.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denis Newman-Griffis
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA. .,Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2015 Neil Avenue, DL 395, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA.
| | - Julia Porcino
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - Ayah Zirikly
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - Thanh Thieu
- Department of Computer Science, Oklahoma State University, 116-A MSCS, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA
| | - Jonathan Camacho Maldonado
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - Pei-Shu Ho
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - Min Ding
- Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD, 20899, USA
| | - Leighton Chan
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - Elizabeth Rasch
- Rehabilitation Medicine Department, National Institutes of Health, Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 856, MSC 5493, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
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Erickson J, Abbott K, Susienka L. Automatic address validation and health record review to identify homeless Social Security disability applicants. J Biomed Inform 2018; 82:41-46. [PMID: 29705196 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2018.04.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2017] [Revised: 01/30/2018] [Accepted: 04/24/2018] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Homeless patients face a variety of obstacles in pursuit of basic social services. Acknowledging this, the Social Security Administration directs employees to prioritize homeless patients and handle their disability claims with special care. However, under existing manual processes for identification of homelessness, many homeless patients never receive the special service to which they are entitled. In this paper, we explore address validation and automatic annotation of electronic health records to improve identification of homeless patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS We developed a sample of claims containing medical records at the moment of arrival in a single office. Using address validation software, we reconciled patient addresses with public directories of homeless shelters, veterans' hospitals and clinics, and correctional facilities. Other tools annotated electronic health records. We trained random forests to identify homeless patients and validated each model with 10-fold cross validation. RESULTS For our finished model, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.942. The random forest improved sensitivity from 0.067 to 0.879 but decreased positive predictive value to 0.382. DISCUSSION Presumed false positive classifications bore many characteristics of homelessness. Organizations could use these methods to prompt early collection of information necessary to avoid labor-intensive attempts to reestablish contact with homeless individuals. Annually, such methods could benefit tens of thousands of patients who are homeless, destitute, and in urgent need of assistance. CONCLUSION We were able to identify many more homeless patients through a combination of automatic address validation and natural language processing of unstructured electronic health records.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer Erickson
- Minnesota Disability Determination Services, 121 7th Place E, Saint Paul, MN 55101, United States.
| | - Kenneth Abbott
- Minnesota Disability Determination Services, 121 7th Place E, Saint Paul, MN 55101, United States
| | - Lucinda Susienka
- Minnesota Disability Determination Services, 121 7th Place E, Saint Paul, MN 55101, United States
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