A new cancer-specific electronic health record will be offered by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This EHR is designed to capture and exchange data specific to a cancer patient’s office visit, and will provide data on patient demographics, disease and treatment results. 

The EHR is based on an early reference implementation of the Patient Outcomes Data Service, an open source “ultra-light record” derived from standards of NCI’s Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG). NCI is working with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Microsoft to complete this project. The specifications and the software are available now through the NCI site but will be made more accessible to providers and consumers within 60 days.

The E-Care record is designed to serve as a continuity of care document, which uses the Clinical Data Architecture from Health Level 7 for the exchange of patient summaries and progress notes. Therefore, it meets a meaningful use requirement for exchanging health records between organizations, and could be a useful source of information for both patients and medical providers.

Because the E-Care record is based on such standards, information may be securely sent to commercial or government-hosted personal health record systems such as a Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, or the Veterans Department’s MyHealtheVet.

For more information, see the original article on Government Health IT.

Tags: ehr, Health Level 7, Interoperability, Meaningful Use, NCI