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Opportunities and challenges in leveraging electronic health record data in oncology

    Marc L Berger

    *Author for correspondence:

    E-mail Address: marc.berger@pfizer.com

    Pfizer Inc., 235 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA

    ,
    Melissa D Curtis

    Flatiron Health, 96 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012, USA

    ,
    Gregory Smith

    Pfizer Inc., 235 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA

    ,
    James Harnett

    Pfizer Inc., 235 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, USA

    &
    Amy P Abernethy

    Flatiron Health, 96 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012, USA

    Published Online:https://doi.org/10.2217/fon-2015-0043

    The widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and the growing wealth of digitized information sources about patients is ushering in an era of ‘Big Data’ that may revolutionize clinical research in oncology. Research will likely be more efficient and potentially more accurate than the current gold standard of manual chart review studies. However, EHRs as they exist today have significant limitations: important data elements are missing or are only captured in free text or PDF documents. Using two case studies, we illustrate the challenges of leveraging the data that are routinely collected by the healthcare system in EHRs (e.g., real-world data), specific challenges encountered in the cancer domain and opportunities that can be achieved when these are overcome.

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