An Algorithm That Identifies Coronary and Heart Failure Events In The Electronic Health Record

Surveillance to track the incidence, prevalence and treatment of disease is a fundamental task of public health. The advent of universal health care coverage in the United States and electronic health records could make the medical record a valuable disease surveillance tool. This can only happen, however, if the necessary data can be extracted from the medical record without manual review.

Objective

The objective of this project was to identify criteria that accurately categorize acute coronary and heart failure events exclusively with electronic health record data so that the medical record can be used for surveillance without manual record review.