The American journal of managed care
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Improving adherence to cardiovascular disease medications with information technology.
Evaluate the utility of 2 electronic medical record (EMR)-linked, automated phone reminder interventions for improving adherence to cardiovascular disease medications. ⋯ Technology-based tools, in conjunction with an EMR, can improve adherence to chronic disease medications and measured cardiovascular disease risk factors.
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Despite rapid growth in the rate of adoption of health information technology (HIT), and in the volume of evaluation studies, the existing knowledge base for the value of HIT is not advancing at a similar rate. Most evaluation articles are limited in that they use incomplete measures of value and fail to report the important contextual and implementation characteristics that would allow for an adequate understanding of how the study results were achieved. To address these deficiencies, we present a conceptual framework for measuring HIT value and we propose a checklist of characteristics that should be considered in HIT evaluation studies. ⋯ Through examples, we show how these principles can be used to guide and improve HIT evaluation studies. The checklist includes a list of contextual and implementation characteristics that are important for interpretation of results. These improvements will make future studies more useful for policy makers and more relevant to the current needs of the healthcare system.