What the patient should order

Abstract

Open global standards, workfl ow integration profi les, and related processes have been developed through consensus-based procedures. Although these standards and profi les should be augmented with additional therapeutic area-based content standards, they are available now to enable the use of electronic health records to directly support clinical research concurrent with patient care. Improving the exchange of information and integrating workfl ow between research and health care are inherently necessary to accelerate the pace of informing clinical decisions based on current research fi ndings and for an effi cient, cost-eff ective health care system to improve the quality of patient care.