AstraZeneca will partner with electronic health records (EHR) firm Practice Fusion to help alert doctors treating patients with asthma or COPD when the best treatment is not being used.
The programme, developed by Practice Fusion and sponsored by AstraZeneca, identifies patients whose current asthma or COPD care does not meet evidence-based clinical guidelines, and then alerts doctors using patient charts within the EHR platform.
The alerts are based on clinical guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease.
AZ currently markets a number of blockbuster medicines for respiratory disorders, including its new treatment Duaklir Genuair, as well as Pulmicort and Symbicort.
As part of this new programme, physicians will also have access to a dashboard within the Practice Fusion EHR platform, which includes real-time and aggregate views of their patients’ health.
Through this dashboard, providers will be able to see the percentage of their patient populations with asthma and COPD, as well as the percentage of those patients whose care meets evidence-based clinical guidelines.
Doctors will also be able to compare their patient populations’ percentages with the median percentages of similar patient populations across all other providers using the Practice Fusion EHR.
John McCarthy, vice president of global commercial excellence for AstraZeneca, said: “AstraZeneca has a strong and established commitment to respiratory disease and is squarely focused on understanding and helping to meet the needs of people facing serious health challenges like asthma and COPD.
“By supporting this important initiative, we believe that we can continue to make true progress in helping healthcare providers in their efforts to improve patient care.”
Around 25 million Americans suffer from asthma, which accounts for more than 3,300 deaths each year. COPD is the third leading cause of death in the US and more than 12 million adult Americans have been diagnosed with the disease.
Ryan Howard, founder and CEO of Practice Fusion, said: “PHM programmes like this empower our providers with data by giving them a quantified view into their patients’ health, which ultimately has the potential to help them identify at-risk patients and promote treatment compliance.
“With our EHR platform managing more than five million patient visits a month, we’re in a prime position to partner with our providers and play an important role in aiding their efforts to improve patient care.”
