EHR Vendor Cerner Expands Clinical Research Network into Pediatrics

EHR vendor Cerner announced that it has expanded its Learning Health Network (LHN) with the addition of Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC) in efforts to advance pediatric clinical research, the company said in a statement emailed to EHRIntelligence.

Launched in early 2020, the EHR vendor’s LHN is made up of a diverse group of 74 diverse health systems that are helping to fuel Cerner Real-World Data (CRWD), a national de-identified dataset that includes 88 million patients and 786 million clinical encounters.

The nationwide network is designed to help health systems access representative data and research resources to accelerate clinical research and trials.

“We’re thrilled to welcome CHOC to the Cerner Learning Health Network,” Christy Dueck, Cerner vice president of real-world data and clinical research, said in a public statement.

“The LHN has the potential of bridging the clinical research disparities that exist today for children,” Dueck continued. “It is significant to have pediatric healthcare systems like CHOC join us to advance this cause and help accelerate the discovery, development, and deployment of groundbreaking insights and medicines.”

Louis Ehwerhemuepha, PhD, CHOC’s lead data scientist, has joined the LHN Governance Council. Ehwerhemuepha will work with other council members to provide independent review and guidance regarding the use of CRWD for clinical research purposes.

The council aims to ensure that the use of LHN data is ethical, confidential, and represents the interests of patients, providers, and healthcare organizations.

Additionally, Bill Feaster, MD, chief health information officer at CHOC, will lead the Pediatric Community of Practice, a group of LHN members that collaborate on pediatric research knowledge and skillsets.

Feaster, Ehwerhemuepha, and their teams have published several studies using CRWD, including one that examined whether patients with a history of malnutrition are predisposed to severe COVID-19.

In total, CHOC retrieved deidentified data on 103,099 COVID-19 inpatient encounters from 56 hospitals in the United States between March 2020 and June 2020 from the Cerner COVID-19 data set.

“CHOC continues to be at the forefront of pediatric research,” said Ehwerhemuepha. “Joining the Cerner Learning Health Network enhances our ability to collaborate with a community of dedicated researchers focused on advancing pediatric research. We believe, together, we can make a meaningful difference by creating the needed insights to help guide the care of children everywhere.”