A new electronic health record only works if it fits how clinicians deliver care. Getting that right takes clinical and informatics expertise, careful configuration and a steady focus on patient safety. We're proud to announce that we’ve received (through our Arrow ARC JV) a five-year blanket purchase agreement with the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Clinical Informatics. Our team will support Federal EHR sustainment and modernization, VistA/CPRS configuration, clinical decision support and informatics patient safety across VA’s health system. “Clinicians notice informatics when it gets in their way of caring for Veterans,” said Dr. Adi Gundlapalli, Aptive's Chief Medical Officer. “An alert that fires at the wrong moment or an order set that doesn’t match the actual workflows takes time away from patients. Our job is to get those details right so the system supports direct patient care and clinical judgment instead of competing with those priorities.” Read more: bit.ly/3W2awfI

A Veteran’s health record shouldn’t stop at the edge of one health system. When records move cleanly between VA, the Department of Defense and community providers, clinicians spend less time searching and more time treating. Aptive is proud to announce a new five-year contract with the VA Office of Clinical Informatics. Our team will lead interoperability work across health information exchange, the Joint Longitudinal Viewer, clinical terminology and standards, helping a Veteran’s full record reach the right clinician at the right time. Read more: bit.ly/4dbuLh4

New research from Dr. Lynda Hoeksema is now published in Frontiers in Digital Health. Her work looks at a new way to detect adverse events across large populations after a triggering event such as medication use or vaccines, using electronic health record data. Working with the FDA in a feasibility study, she helped test methods to use AI tools to scan through volumes of records and thousands of pages of clinical notes using precise computable criteria to reliably flag notable cases to bring to the attention of expert doctors. This can enhance the clinical review process to detect adverse events and provides additional support to the physicians reviewing potential cases. In this study, that meant looking at mRNA vaccines and a rare heart condition called myocarditis. The good news: the approach works. The AI methodology the team designed consistently identified relevant medical information and potential adverse event cases for safety reviewers to focus on for additional in-depth human review. This could take a big load off the clinicians who would otherwise have to sift through mountains of records by hand. We're proud to have her expertise on the Aptive team and excited to see this work in print. Congratulations, Dr. Hoeksema! Read the study: bit.ly/4dEDt7y