Automated Electronic Health Record to Electronic Data Capture Transfer in Clinical Studies in the German Health Care System: Feasibility Study and Gap Analysis

Abstract

Background: Data transfer between electronic health records (EHRs) at the point of care and electronic data capture (EDC) systems for clinical research is still mainly carried out manually, which is error-prone as well as cost- and time-intensive. Automated digital transfer from EHRs to EDC systems (EHR2EDC) would enable more accurate and efficient data capture but has so far encountered technological barriers primarily related to data format and the technological environment: in Germany, health care data are collected at the point of care in a variety of often individualized practice management systems (PMSs), most of them not interoperable. Data quality for research purposes within EDC systems must meet the requirements of regulatory authorities for standardized submission of clinical trial data and safety reports.

Objective: We aimed to develop a model for automated data transfer as part of an observational study that allows data of sufficient quality to be captured at the point of care, extracted from various PMSs, and automatically transferred to electronic case report forms in EDC systems. This required addressing aspects of data security, as well as the lack of compatibility between EHR health care data and the data quality required in EDC systems for clinical research.

Methods: The SaniQ software platform (Qurasoft GmbH) is already used to extract and harmonize predefined variables from electronic medical records of different Compu Group Medical-hosted PMSs. From there, data are automatically transferred to the validated AlcedisTRIAL EDC system (Alcedis GmbH) for data collection and management. EHR2EDC synchronization occurs automatically overnight, and real-time updates can be initiated manually following each data entry in the EHR. The electronic case report form (eCRF) contains 13 forms with 274 variables. Of these, 5 forms with 185 variables contain 67 automatically transferable variables (67/274, 24% of all variables and 67/185, 36% of eligible variables).

Results: This model for automated data transfer bridges the current gap between clinical practice data capture at the point of care and the data sets required by regulatory agencies; it also enables automated EHR2EDC data transfer in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It addresses feasibility, connectivity, and system compatibility of currently used PMSs in health care and clinical research and is therefore directly applicable.

Conclusions: This use case demonstrates that secure, consistent, and automated end-to-end data transmission from the treating physician to the regulatory authority is feasible. Automated data transmission can be expected to reduce effort and save resources and costs while ensuring high data quality. This may facilitate the conduct of studies for both study sites and sponsors, thereby accelerating the development of new drugs. Nevertheless, the industry-wide implementation of EHR2EDC requires policy decisions that set the framework for the use of research data based on routine PMS data.

Keywords: EDC; EHR; EHR2EDC; automated data transfer; barrier; clinical practice; data transfer; digital transfer; digital transformation; electronic data capture; electronic health record; electronic medical record; health care system.