Research Highlights

Special Issue Focuses on VA Informatics

July 1, 2004

A special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), electronically published in June with print publication in September, features six articles on VA's Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). The QUERI program, now in its sixth year, is a large-scale, multidisciplinary quality improvement initiative designed to translate and implement evidence-based research into practice. QUERI targets nine diseases/conditions that are prevalent among veterans, and its investigators rely upon VA's vast data resources to carry out their research.

This special issue of JAMIA highlights the role of information systems in the QUERI process. The issue includes overviews of QUERI and VA information systems, as well as articles that target specific data-related projects. For example, Dr. Frances Weaver and colleagues with the Spinal Cord Injury QUERI compared multiple data sources to identify vaccinations for veterans with spinal cord injuries and disorders. Dr. Rick Owen and colleagues with the Mental Health QUERI studied the use of electronic medical record data for quality improvement in the treatment of schizophrenia. Another article discusses automated decision support for hypertension as it relates to translating research into practice. To access these articles, visit the JAMIA web site at http://www.jamia.org/preprints.shtml .