Abstract
BackgroundIn Belgium, the construction of a national electronic point-of-care information service, EBMPracticeNet, was initiated in 2011 to optimize quality of care by promoting evidence-based decision-making. The collaboration of the government, health care providers, evidence-based medicine (EBM) partners, and vendors of electronic health records (EHR) is unique to this project. All Belgian health care professionals get free access to an up-to-date database of validated Belgian and nearly 1000 international guidelines, incorporated in a portal that also provides EBM information from other sources than guidelines, including computerized clinical decision support that is integrated in the EHRs.ObjectiveThe objective of this paper was to describe the development strategy, the overall content, and the management of EBMPracticeNet which may be of relevance to other health organizations creating national or regional electronic point-of-care information services.MethodsSeveral candidate providers of comprehensive guideline solutions were evaluated and one database was selected. Translation of the guidelines to Dutch and French was done with translation software, post-editing by translators and medical proofreading. A strategy is determined to adapt the guideline content to the Belgian context. Acceptance of the computerized clinical decision support tool has been tested and a randomized controlled trial is planned to evaluate the effect on process and patient outcomes.ResultsCurrently, EBMPracticeNet is in "work in progress" state. Reference is made to the results of a pilot study and to further planned research including a randomized controlled trial.ConclusionsThe collaboration of government, health care providers, EBM partners, and vendors of EHRs is unique. The potential value of the project is great. The link between all the EHRs from different vendors and a national database held on a single platform that is controlled by all EBM organizations in Belgium are the strengths of EBMPracticeNet.
Highlights
There has been an explosive growth in scientific evidence, with 75 trials and 11 systematic reviews being published a day [1]
The link between all the electronic health records (EHR) from different vendors and a national database held on a single platform that is controlled by all evidence-based medicine (EBM) organizations in Belgium are the strengths of EBMPracticeNet. (JMIR Res Protoc 2013;2(2):e23) doi:10.2196/resprot
A research agenda needs to be developed to evaluate the impact of EBMPracticeNet on the care provided by Belgian health care providers
Summary
There has been an explosive growth in scientific evidence, with 75 trials and 11 systematic reviews being published a day [1]. Designed information retrieval and clinical decision support systems are being promoted as a Global Positioning System to prevent health care providers from getting lost in clinical practice [4,5,6]. Such systems either use technologies, where users can pull clinical information from a database or use services that push information through reminders or alerts [7,8]. All Belgian health care professionals get free access to an up-to-date database of validated Belgian and nearly 1000 international guidelines, incorporated in a portal that provides EBM information from other sources than guidelines, including computerized clinical decision support that is integrated in the EHRs
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