Update 2/2
One of the challenges we have run into while preparing for our clinical trials has been gaining IRB approval to run the experiment. One big issue that our group had to tackle was the issue of privacy regarding the patients participating in the trial. We know that IRB would most likely refuse the proposal if it included giving information to our group. Giving our group patient data would also not be HIPAA compliant so we had to figure out a way to acquire data without breaking any rules.
Instead of our original idea of having a separate web-based application, we decided to migrate to using Vanderbilt’s electronic health record (EHR). We plan on integrating an alert under the prescription for Metoprolol in order to tell doctors that the patient has genetic information available that is relevant to the prescription. We are in the process of figuring out what kind of message would be most effective in addition to what kind of implementation would be the most successful. In the meantime, we will be using an alert similar to ones already integrated called a “best practice alert” or “BPA”. Unfortunately, our group will not be able to interact with the EHR at all due to security issues. However, we will be working with the Vanderbilt IT team that works with the EHR in order to modify the EHR.