Clinical Informatics Fellows Drs. Lori Wong and Daniel Liu — along with their mentor, Dr. Pele Yu — have published a Letter to the Editor in the January issue of Applied Clinical Informatics.
The letter informs the clinical informatics scientific community about ongoing work to develop an electronic health record (EHR) system focused on pediatric patients and their doctors. The authors, clinical informaticians at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH), are part of an Health Level 7 (HL7) EHR workgroup on the Pediatric Care Health Information Technology Functional Profile Release 1 (PCHIT FP R1), which includes work on IT functions and criteria tailored to pediatrics. The standards will be used by EHR vendors for certification.
The standards were developed with the assistance of pediatric experts and organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics. The functional profile is complete and has been approved through the HL7 balloting process. It will publish in the first quarter of 2022.
“It is an important part of our training program for fellows to not only get the real-world experience of participating in the standards development process, but to write and publish about these experiences,” said Dr. Yu, co-author on the paper and program director for the UAMS/ACH Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program. “Congratulations to Dr. Wong and Dr. Liu for being part of this important effort to improve EHR systems in the pediatric setting and for sharing their work with their scientific peers.”
The letter is in response to an editorial published previously in Applied Clinical Informatics by Dr. Arlene Chung calling for more focus on EHR standardization in pediatrics: “Pediatric Health Information Technology — What We Need for Optimal Care of Children.”
Both Dr. Wong and Dr. Liu are senior fellows in the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at UAMS. Wong is the first author and Drs. Liu and Yu are co-authors. Drs. Liu and Yu are pediatricians in addition to clinical informaticians.
Health Level Seven® International (HL7) is an ANSI-accredited, not-for-profit standards developing organization with the mission of empowering global health interoperability. Dr. Yu is a longtime HL7 active member and volunteer.