title: Establishing a continuum of acute kidney injury - tracing AKI using data source linkage and long-term follow-up: Workgroup Statements from the 15th ADQI Consensus Conference.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Acute kidney injury (AKI) is independently associated with the development of chronic kidney disease, endstage kidney disease and increased all-cause and cardiovascular-specific mortality. The severity of the renal insult and the development of multiple AKI episodes increase the risk of occurrence of these outcomes. Despite these long-term effects, only a minority of patients receive nephrologist follow up after an episode of AKI; those that do may have improved outcomes. Furthermore, relatively simple quality improvement strategies have the potential to change this status quo.
  
  
  METHODS
  On this background, a working group of the 15(th) Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) conference applied the consensus-building process informed by review of English language articles identified through PubMed search to address questions related to the opportunities, methodological requirements and barriers for longitudinal follow-up of patients with AKI in the era of electronic health records and Big Data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Four consensus statements answering the key questions identified by the working group are developed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We have identified minimal data elements and potential data sources necessary to trace the natural history of patients from onset of AKI to long-term outcome. Minimum infrastructure and key barriers to achieving these goals are outlined together with proposed solutions.
authors.affiliation: Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA USA.
authors.forename: Ravindra
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mehta
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology, University of Florida, Box 100254, Gainesville, FL 32610-0254 USA.
authors.forename: Azra
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5745-2863
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bihorac
authors.affiliation: Division of Health Sciences and Graduate Entry Medicine, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: Nicholas M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Selby
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada.
authors.forename: Hude
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Quan
authors.affiliation: Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH USA.
authors.forename: Stuart L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Goldstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Critical Care Medicine, Center for Critical Care Nephrology, CRISMA Centre, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA USA.
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Kellum
authors.affiliation: Department of Nephrology Dialysis & Transplantation, San Bortolo Hospital and the International Renal Research Institute (IRRIV), 36100 Vicenza, Italy.
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ronco
authors.affiliation: Division of Critical Care Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: Sean M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Bagshaw
keywords: Acute kidney injury; Big Data; Blue Button Initiative; Chronic kidney disease; Electronic health records; Interoperability; Longitudinal follow-up; Minimal data set