PathworX is a computer-based tool for care management, documentation, and quality improvement, based on interdisciplinary care pathways built by clinical teams. Literature review identifies, for particular diagnoses and procedures, current best practices. Clinical and organizational knowledge then guides design of a comprehensive, time-specific care pathway extending from admission to discharge to clinic visits. The team determines the therapeutic goals for each phase of the pathway, organize and coordinate the assessments, treatments, medications, tests, teaching, etc. done in each phase, and produces a template pathway that becomes the starting point in managing the care of individual patients. When a patient is admitted to the hospital, the admitting nurse uses PathworX to assign a pathway to a patient, and customizes the pathway to match patient needs. PathworX then produces specific "flow sheets" and other forms that nurses use to record care given and assess patient progress toward identified goals (or to record reasons for goals not achieved). In addition to promoting quality in the care of each patient, PathworX is a valuable tool for continual quality improvement (CQI). Because PathworX and WizOrder developed as separate projects, there has not heretofore been provision for the flow of information between these applications. The NLM-funded R01 project, EMILIE: Integrated Information for Collaborative Care will realize the long-standing vision of discipline-specific interfaces to a common pool of information resources. The focus of the project is to reduce inadvertent deviations from a pathway and to discover the consequences, positive or negative, of deliberate deviations from a pathway. The EMILIE project offers research opportunities for trainees related to terminologies and standards, decision support, clinical knowledge discovery, human and organizational processes, and software engineering. It also provides opportunities for trainees to learn about the integration of information and clinical processes across health care disciplines with a faculty who models interdisciplinary integration and collaboration.

Primary Contact: Judy Ozbolt, RN PhD.