Among Chris Harle's many clinical research interests, he's been keenly focused for years on interoperable decision support tools, helping steer primary care providers toward more guideline-recommended prescribing patterns with more intuitive EHR information design, AI-enabled opioid prediction and risk-stratification tools and other data-driven imperatives related to provider experience, quality improvement, patient safety and population health.

Harle is a professor and chair in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Indiana University's Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. He's also a research scientist in the affiliated Regenstrief Institute's center for biomedical informatics and an associate faculty member in IU's Kelley School of Business.

On the occasion of his recent induction into the American College of Medical Informatics, we spoke with Harle to learn more about the science of clinical and biomedical informatics – how he's seen it evolve, where he thinks it's headed and what that means for providers and patients alike. He spoke about how AI is shaping CDC strategies, how better UX can make EHRs more effective and his own initiative focused on safer prescribing for chronic pain.

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Talking points:

• Harle's work at Indiana University and Regenstrief Institute.

• How medical and biomedical informatics have changed in recent years.

• How he sees them continuing to evolve with advanced analytics and AI.

• Ways IT systems for information management and clinical decision support can be improved.

• The importance of design and UX for effective informatics.

• How can EHRs be better designed for better care delivery and improved patient outcomes.

• OneSheet – what it is, and how it can help with chronic pain and safer prescribing.

• Encouraging primary care clinicians to think differently about prescribing choices.

More about this episode:

HIMSSCast: New analytics strategies for patient-centric pop health
Regenstrief and SNOMED announce new LOINC and SNOMED CT interoperability
AI NLP models extract SDOH data from clinical notes
Regenstrief develops framework to assess patient matching accuracy
The Indiana Health Information Exchange stays on the cutting edge
Regenstrief study shows EHRs underperforming for primary care