Tucked in a data center in the basement of Vanderbilt University Hospital, a new computer the size of a large armoire, called a data warehouse appliance, is delivering a new order of speed to Vanderbilt clinical scientists as they search, filter, analyze and annotate the de-identified medical records of approximately 2 million patients.

Diagnostic codes used for billing purposes effectively identify smokers in a general clinic population and can be used to adjust smoking status in genetic and epidemiologic studies.

Within StarPanel, the medical records system used at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, patient care team members each have an electronic message “basket,” making it simple to store messages and link them to medical records.

A great deal of biomedical and health services research at some point involves record de-identification, whether it’s prior to the sharing of study data or, in the case of large patient databases, prior to the initial extraction of study data.

The less time nurses and staff spend documenting their work in the medical record, the more time they can spend with patients.

A tool developed for one institution’s electronic health records can work at other institutions, potentially facilitating the use of these records in research studies.