title: Impacts of structuring the electronic health record: Results of a systematic literature review from the perspective of secondary use of patient data.
abstract: To explore the impacts that structuring of electronic health records (EHRs) has had from the perspective of secondary use of patient data as reflected in currently published literature. This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review aimed at answering the following questions; (1) what are the common methods of structuring patient data to serve secondary use purposes; (2) what are the common methods of evaluating patient data structuring in the secondary use context, and (3) what impacts or outcomes of EHR structuring have been reported from the secondary use perspective.
  
  
  
  The reported study forms part of a wider systematic literature review on the impacts of EHR structuring methods and evaluations of their impact. The review was based on a 12-step systematic review protocol adapted from the Cochrane methodology. Original articles included in the study were divided into three groups for analysis and reporting based on their use focus: nursing documentation, medical use and secondary use (presented in this paper). The analysis from the perspective of secondary use of data includes 85 original articles from 1975 to 2010 retrieved from 15 bibliographic databases.
  
  
  
  The implementation of structured EHRs can be roughly divided into applications for documenting patient data at the point of care and application for retrieval of patient data (post hoc structuring). Two thirds of the secondary use articles concern EHR structuring methods which were still under development or in the testing phase.
  
  
  
  of structuring patient data such as codes, terminologies, reference information models, forms or templates and documentation standards were usually applied in combination. Most of the identified benefits of utilizing structured EHR data for secondary use purposes concentrated on information content and quality or on technical quality and reliability, particularly in the case of Natural Language Processing (NLP) studies. A few individual articles evaluated impacts on care processes, productivity and costs, patient safety, care quality or other health impacts. In most articles these endpoints were usually discussed as goals of secondary use and less as evidence-supported impacts, resulting from the use of structured EHR data for secondary purposes.
  
  
  
  Further studies and more sound evaluation methods are needed for evidence on how EHRs are utilized for secondary purposes, and how structured documentation methods can serve different users' needs, e.g. administration, statistics and research and development, in parallel to medical use purposes.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland. Electronic address: riikka.vuokko@thl.fi.
authors.forename: Riikka
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vuokko
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland.
authors.forename: Päivi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mäkelä-Bengs
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland.
authors.forename: Hannele
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hyppönen
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland.
authors.forename: Minna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lindqvist
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Health and Welfare, Finland.
authors.forename: Persephone
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Doupi
mesh_terms: D004282:Documentation; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000592:standards*; D062527:Meaningful Use; D011787:Quality of Health Care
keywords: Electronic health records; Free text; Secondary use of patient data; Structured data; Systematic literature review