Linking EMR Data to REDCap: Implementation in the SOLKID Register

Brix T.J.; Greulich L.; Janssen A.; Riepenhausen S.; Neuhaus P.; Oehm J.; Wegner J.; Suwelack B.; Storck M.; Varghese J.

Abstract

Secondary use, the reuse of medical patient data stored during routine care in the hospital's electronic medical records (EMR) for research purpose is common, especially for registers and pragmatic trials. Often the medical data items are copied manually from the EMR into the used research database. This process is time consuming and error prone. In the 'Safety of the Living Kidney Donor-The German National Register' (SOLKID-GNR), laboratory results gathered during control check-ups of the living donors before and after the transplantation are to be transferred from the EMR into the electronic data capture system REDCap of the register. In this work, we present our approach of realizing an automated transfer of time-dependent laboratory results from the EMR of the University Hospital of Münster to REDCap. A challenge lies in the multi-center structure of SOLKID-GNR. The participating transplant centers are using different EMR systems, which requires a flexible architecture design. In addition, we aimed to support reuse of the implementation for other research settings with other medical data items of interest.