Integrating research data capture into the electronic health record workflow: real-world experience to advance innovation.

As the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) increases, more opportunities are available for leveraging the system and the data to facilitate research. Historically, for patients enrolled in clinical research trials or studies, data have been documented in the medical record, and then study-related data are manually reentered into an electronic case report form in a research system. By utilizing data collected in the EHR to prepopulate electronic case report forms, manual transcription is reduced, data quality is improved, and the workflow for capturing research data is streamlined. Past efforts to integrate EHRs and research systems for the purposes of data capture have demonstrated that interoperability is possible. This article highlights how Cerner Corporation and Florida Hospital collaborated to extend an existing standard to implement a workflow called Integrated Data Capture.