The Implications of Clinical Data Mining for Enhancing Clinical Concerns and Advanced Practice Nursing Interventions Week 4

Data Mining and Improving Patient Outcomes 

  

 Welcome to week 4 of the blog 💚we are half way through our course and going to be exploring the potentials of data mining and how it can improve nursing care which improves patient outcomes in the longrun. I am also going to review the article Automated data mining of the electronic health record for investigation of healthcare-associated outbreaks and discussing how data mining is beneficial in improving patient care. 

    What is clinical data mining and how as future FNPs can we use it to benefit our patients? Clinical data mining is used to analyze, synthesize, and sort through the plethora of big data the medical world has to assist with tasks such as risk stratification, diagnosis, classification, survival prediction, and predict trends (Qiao et al., 2024). Data mining is a form of artificial intelligence that is becoming increasingly important in the medical field and has been used to not only make advancements in diagnostics and disease predictions but also to help monitor and manage healthcare systems (Kolling et al., 2021). Data mining is not a modern concept, but what was once done on pen and paper is now done with the most advanced software and computers in modern technology to handle the vast amount of data that is available in today's world. We are constantly collecting data in healthcare and utilizing it to make advancements, but without sorting it, analyzing it and being able to make sense of the trends within the data we simply just have lots of information without any application. This is why there is such a need for and such a strong push towards advancements in data management. Utilizing the different data mining software available today, you can obtain whatever trend or analysis you are looking for from the larger set of data you originally start with.

 

    The article Automated data mining of the electronic health record for investigation of healthcare-associated outbreaks examines how data mining can be used to investigate the outbreak of an infection in a healthcare system by using data mining to investigate patient records. 9 hospital outbreaks between 2011-2016 were examined, and data mining was used by utilizing EHRs of infected patients to then see where they had been, who they had been in contact with, and how they could prevent the spread to other patients (Sundermann et al., 2019). The rationale for using data mining in outbreaks is not only to slow the spread but also to hopefully identify the source. Large data sets are analyzed, such as patient location, interaction, treatments, therapies, and procedures received, and provider interaction, to help identify the source (Sundermann et al., 2019). This example of data mining can be so crucial to hospital outbreaks, especially when it comes to infections that are especially rare, deadly, or rapidly transmitted, as it is essential to try to stop the outbreak as quickly as possible.  

            As a future FNP, I can undoubtedly see utilizing data mining in many different areas of patient care. Especially with managing chronic health conditions and trying to reduce the negative comorbidities associated with them. Utilizing predictivesoftware to determine what other negative consequences patients may be at risk for could certainly be beneficial in using preventive medicine to help not only significantly improve patient outcomes but also potentially reduce their healthcare costs in the long run. I could also see utilizing data mining to see where patients are happy with their healthcare and where they want improvement. As a future FNP, I could also see regularly utilizing data mining to help with medication prescribing and administration, as well as diagnostics. If there is a way to help diagnose patients faster and with more efficacy, provide them with better quality of care, run more accurate risk assessments, and improve their quality of life and overall outcomes, then I believe in using whatever technology or software is necessary. Our goals as healthcare workers and future providers are to care for our patients and to help them obtain the best goal achievable for them, and utilizing data mining is a powerful tool for us. 

References

Kolling, M. L., Furstenau, L. B., Sott, M. K., Rabaioli, B., Ulmi, P. H., Bragazzi, N. L., & Tedesco, L. P. C. (2021). Data Mining in Healthcare: Applying Strategic Intelligence Techniques to Depict 25 Years of Research Development. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(6), 3099. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18063099

Qiao, H., Chen, Y., Qian, C., & Guo, Y. (2024). Clinical data mining: challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for translational applications. Journal of Translational Medicine, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-024-05005-0

Sundermann, A. J., Miller, J. K., Marsh, J. W., Saul, M. I., Shutt, K. A., Pacey, M., Mustapha, M. M., Ayres, A., Pasculle, A. W., Chen, J., Snyder, G. M., Dubrawski, A. W., & Harrison, L. H. (2019). Automated data mining of the electronic health record for investigation of healthcare-associated outbreaks. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 40(3), 314–319. https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2018.343

Personal Health Records and Patient Engagement Week 3

Personal Health Records and Their Impact on Patient Engagement and Safety

Welcome back💜! This week's blo,g we are going to look at PHRs and understand the difference between them and EHRs  👀

    What is a Personal Health Record (PHR)? How does its use increase patient engagement? How do they increase patient safety and provide better quality of care? How do PHRs improve the relationship between patients and providers? Questions that are key to understanding how PHRs play a critical role in the daily life and patients and providers and how patient outcomes can be improved. 

    What is a Personal Health Record? A PHR is the collection of an individual's medical documentation maintained by the individual or a caregiver in cases where patients are unable to do so themselves. According to Sarwal and Gupta (2024), the personal information includes details such as:

• The patient's medical history
• Applicable diagnoses
• Historical and ongoing medications, including over-the-counter and alternative treatments
• Past medical and surgical interventions
• Immunization status
• Allergies and other relevant medical conditions that can impact the delivery of emergency care (eg, type 1 diabetes)
• Blood type
• Whom to contact in the event of an emergency
• Insurance information
• Contact information for the patient's regular health providers

    PHRs can either be independent, standalone records or tethered personal records, both though are beneficial to keeping the patient's healthcare management up to date. A standalone PHR is where the information is filled in by the patient based on their own memory and records and is kept on the patient's personal electronic devices or the internet (HealthIt.gov, 2019). They can then choose who they share it with, such as family, friends, and their healthcare team, and they can update it with information like exercise, diet, and track their progress over time (HealthIt.gov, 2019). A tethered PHR is linked to an organization's electronic health records and provides the patient access through a secure portal that provides them information on their test results and trends, vaccination records, and when they are due for health screenings (HealthIt.gov, 2019). 

    PHRs can improve patient adherence to follow-up, allow patients to better monitor therapeutic goals such as blood pressure or blood glucose thresholds, allow recognition of improvement or worsening of control of existing medical conditions, improve compliance with medication regimens, especially when these regimens are complex—all of which culminate in the achievement of superior management of medical issues (Sarwal & Gupta, 2024). When patients are more engaged with their healthcare, they are more likely to adhere to their treatment plans and medication regimens and are more likely to go to follow-up appointments because they understand the need to do so. When utilizing PHRs, patients can see all of their information in one easy-to-access location, which makes it convenient and also allows patients to ask providers current questions about their healthcare and creates a strong patient-provider relationship (Ruhi & Chugh, 2021). 

    PHRs can also be used in emergencies when patients or their loved ones are unable to provide necessary medical information (The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 2011). They can also provide patients with better care coordination because patients can see all of the information about their care providers in one place and communicate with their team as needed. Overall, the goal of PHR is to foster an environment of safety, create better patient-provider relationships, reduce costs to the patient, promote better patient outcomes, and provide reliable information to be shared between patients and providers (Ruhi & Chugh, 2021). 

                                                                        References

HealthIt.gov. (2019, July 30). Are there different types of personal health records (PHRs)? | HealthIT.gov. Www.healthit.gov. https://www.healthit.gov/faq/are-there-different-types-personal-health-records-phrs

Ruhi, U., & Chugh, R. (2021). Utility, Value, and Benefits of Contemporary Personal Health Records: Integrative Review and Conceptual Synthesis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 23(4), e26877. https://doi.org/10.2196/26877

Sarwal, D., & Gupta, V. (2024, September 10). Personal health record. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557757/

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology . (2011). PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS: WHAT HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS NEED TO KNOW. https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/about-phrs-for-providers-011311.pdf

Electronic Health Records (EHR) Week 2

Electronic Health Records...A reflection 

Welcome back, everyone, to week 2 of the blog😀 

    This week we are going to look at electronic health records and reflect on their to our job as future FNPs and their importance to our patients. Electronic Health Records (EHR)...how does it improve patient safety? How does it improve quality of care? What are they and why are they so crucial to modern-day healthcare?

    An EHR is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format (Tapuria et al., 2021). Providing patients with access to EHRs can decrease these costs, improve self-care and quality of care, and improve health and patient-centered outcomes (Tapuria et al., 2021). 

    EHRs help patients to be more informed about their healthcare, and when patients are well informed, they tend to be more engaged in their health management and willing to work with their providers. Having patients actively use EHRs such as myChart in our health system allows them to be in communication with their healthcare team, ask questions, review test results and medications, see upcoming procedures, and actively view their current treatment plans. When patients are well-informed and have access to their information, they are more likely to be satisfied with their care (Tapuria et al., 2021). The U.S. government's MyHealthEData initiative has made citizen access to their health records a top priority, as have private companies, like Apple and Google, which can store patients’ records on their phones (Tapuria et al., 2021). By focusing on the accessibility of EHR, patient involvement in their care increases, patient outcomes improve, and their satisfaction with their care team increases as well. With high patient involvement in their treatment, there also tends to be a lower healthcare cost for patients because they are more likely to treat the conditions they have, are more likely to follow their treatment plan, and have a higher rate of medication adherence (Tapuria et al., 2021).

In the United States, there has been a significant investment in the adoption and use of Health Information Technologies (HIT) by providing over 35 billion dollars of support through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed in 2009  (Trout et al., 2022).  According to Alder (2025), the five main goals of the HITECH ACT are to: 

1. Improve quality, safety, and efficiency
2. Engage patients in their care
3. Increase coordination of care
4. Improve the health status of the population, and
5. Ensure privacy and security 

HITECH ACT has allowed patients to be more involved in their healthcare and has allowed providers to offer better care for their patients by coordinating care, working with other providers, having increased communication with patients, and building a stronger provider-patient relationship (Alder, 2025). Since 2011, Medicare and Medicaid have had EHR incentive programs that promote meaningful use of EHRs by providers and healthcare organizations to promote better patient outcomes and foster a community of safety (Trout et al., 2022). 

Another area of assistance that EHR is working towards bettering is that of patient harm reduction, increasing safety and using reporting tools to improve patient care. While some evidence shows that EHRs are still lacking in some of the fundamentals that support improving patient safety, other studies have shown the EHRs are demonstrating a sustained improvement of reporting events and improving patient outcomes (Upadhyay & Hu, 2022). Data from EHR can also be used in predictive analytic software which allows providers to see gage possible negative outcomes for patients with chronic illnesses, demonstrate positive trends, and predict future trends (Upadhyay & Hu, 2022). 

As future FNPs, we already use EHRs in our daily work as nurses and see the benefits in how important they are for improving patient care. Once we begin working as providers, I can how EHRs will allow for better communication with patients, better communication with other providers and members of patients' care team, improved care coordination, improved patient engagement, better diagnostic results, and an improvement in overall patient outcomes. By having patient information stored and accessible at the click of a button, we as future providers, can gather patient information quicker, even if it is from outside our healthcare system, see results, communicate with other team members, and work together to provide better diagnosis, more current treatment plans and engage our patients in their care. If we can encourage patients to follow their care plans, comply with medication adherence, and witness prescription refills by using EHR we can also help save our patients time and money by treating their conditions sooner and hopefully reduce hospitalizations and complications. 

References

Alder, S. (2025). What is the HITECH Act? The HIPAA Journal. https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-is-the-hitech-act/

Tapuria, A., Porat, T., Kalra, D., Dsouza, G., Xiaohui, S., & Curcin, V. (2021). Impact of patient access to their electronic health record: systematic review. Informatics for Health and Social Care, 46(2), 194–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538157.2021.1879810

Trout, K. E., Chen, L.-W., Wilson, F. A., Tak, H. J., & Palm, D. (2022). The Impact of Meaningful Use and Electronic Health Records on Hospital Patient Safety. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(19), 12525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912525

Upadhyay, S., & Hu, H. (2022). A qualitative analysis of the impact of electronic health records (EHR) on healthcare quality and safety: Clinicians’ lived experiences. Health Services Insights, 15(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/11786329211070722

Family Nurse Practitioners and their roles as Nursing Informatic Specialists Week 1

 Reflecting on the role as an APRN as it relates to collaboration between your role as a Family Nurse Practitioner and the nursing informatics specialist

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog for GSNG 6700. My name is Maggie Strout, and I am a graduate family nurse practitioner student at Roberts Wesleyan College. I am exploring the world of nursing informatics and learning what it takes to become an informatics specialist. This week in my blog, we are going to look at the role of FNPs and its collaborative role as an informatics specialist. 

    As a future Family Nurse Practitioner(FNP)my role will include bridging the gap in clinical care and technology by exploring the evolving new world of informatics. With the demand for technology in healthcare growing, we all will soon need to be informatics specialists in order to provide quality, evidence-based patient care. This collaborative effort between FNP and the technology world can truly boost patient outcomes if used carefully. 

    First, let's look at all that an FNP does. FNPs not only see patients and preform assessments, make diagnosis, create treatment plans and prescribe medications (Dantas et al., 2023). They also collaborate with other disciplines and specialties to provide excellent patient care (Dantas et al., 2023). They utilize different tools and technologies to communicate with patients and other providers, monitor at home testing results from patients utilizing telehealth devices, and a plethora of other jobs! FNPs are used to the collaborative side of medicine, incorporating nursing informatics simply makes their jobs more accessible and provide better care for their patients.

Nursing informatics as defined by the ANA is "integration of nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice"(American Nurses Association, 2023). Nursing informatics to most of us who have been nurses for less than 10 years or so used to the most common technologies we use today that we would struggle using paper charts and would be lost without our WOWs. Once electronic health records (EHRs) were put into everyday use many nurses and NPs become superusers and tech leaders (American Association of Nurse Practioners , 2019).

 Having access to the technology we use every day as nurses now, such as eRecord, myChart, Pacs7, and many others, will help us transition to our roles as FNPs much smoother than if we were not utilizing these technologies daily. With all of the advancements in medical technology that are occurring and being brought into our facilities currently, by the time we are FNPs, the technology we will be using will far surpass what it is now. The collaborative efforts that nursing teaches you from the start will help us collaborate with superusers, educators, and team leads to learn the technology we will use as future FNPs. I hope that as I advance in my career, I stay open to learning new technology and am proficient enough to help other providers and, most importantly, patients when they need it. 

 

 

References

•         American Association of Nurse Practioners . (2019, February 6). Going Beyond the EHR: Health Care Informatics. American Association of Nurse Practitioners; AANP Website. https://www.aanp.org/news-feed/going-beyond-the-ehr-health-care-informatics

•   American Nurses Association. (2023, July 5). What is nursing informatics and why is it so important? ANA. https://www.nursingworld.org/content-hub/resources/nursing-resources/nursing-informatics/
•             Dantas, M., Pereira, I., Freitas, L. S., Karine, S., Sonenberg, A., & Katherinne, I. (2023). Family Nurse Practitioners: An exploratory study. Revista Da Escola de Enfermagem Da USP, 57(57). https://doi.org/10.1590/1980-220x-reeusp-2022-0362en