The University of Minnesota, in partnership with Fairview Health Services, has strengthened the integration between the OnCore clinical trial management system (CTMS) and Epic, Fairview’s electronic health record.
Now system users will be able to populate Epic with some of the data from OnCore, and vice versa. This will streamline processes for research staff, improve billing accuracy, eliminate duplicate data, and strengthen communication between researchers and providers.
“This level of integration between the clinical trial management system and the electronic health record puts the University of Minnesota at the leading edge,” says Josh Fehrmann, CTMS Implementation Project Manager, Clinical and Translational Science Institute. “With this latest enhancement, we’ve significantly advanced efforts to create an integrated information technology environment that can effectively support research.”
OnCore and Epic users now can:
- Automatically send real-time study participant status updates from OnCore to Epic, such as to alert providers that a patient is part of a clinical trial.
- Send study calendars from OnCore to Epic for more accurate pricing, budgeting, and billing reconciliation.
- Look up consented Epic patients by medical record number and name, and import their demographics and contact data into OnCore.
- Send study information from OnCore to Epic to request a billing account.
CTSI, which is supporting the University-wide deployment of OnCore, implemented these enhancements in partnership with Fairview. Both institutions will benefit, as Fairview Senior Project Manager Julie Sheehy explains:
“This enhancement will help eliminate duplicate work for research staff at both Fairview and the University, and support consistent data quality between the systems.”
It will not affect the way users link encounters, order, or document in Epic, nor will it impact Epic statements.
OnCore is currently deployed at the University’s Masonic Cancer Center, Cardiovascular Division, Department of Pediatrics and CTSI, and will be rolled out to additional domains in the coming months.