Informatics Institute PowerTalk Seminar Series - Clinical Informatics: Theresa L. Walunas, Ph.D., FAMIA

Topic: “Taming a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Informatics Infrastructure for Detecting and Monitoring Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Using Electronic Health Record Data” 

Presenter: Theresa L. Walunas, Ph.D., FAMIA 
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of General Internal Medicine
Associate Director, Center for Health Information Partnerships
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Description:
Systemic autoimmune diseases, like lupus, reflect an new frontier for computational phenotyping: they are complex diseases that develop over time, impact multiple organ systems and involves a large, multi-specialty care team.

Physician diagnosis of lupus is the gold standard for identification of patients in EHR data, but the complexity of identification combined with many symptoms that mimic other conditions can result in late diagnosis for many patients, particularly those that have lower contact with the health care system or receive care across multiple health care systems.

In this talk, developing strategies will be shared to identify lupus in the absence of a clear diagnosis and the impact of fragmented healthcare on data availability for predicting disease and health outcomes for people with lupus.