Data-Driven Decision Support Tool Co-Development with a Primary Health Care Practice Based Learning Network

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Primary Health Care Research
• Health Services Research

Background:

• The Alliance for Healthier Communities supports Ontario Community Health Centres (CHCs) in delivering team-based primary care.
• This case study focuses on the co-development of a data-driven decision support tool within the Practice Based Learning Network (PBLN).

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the process and lessons learned from co-developing a decision support tool using electronic health record (EHR) data.
• To inform future initiatives for developing EHR-based decision support tools in primary health care settings.

Main Methods:

• An iterative approach involving discussion sessions and case studies with CHC EHR data.
• Six stages of development: population-level study, team engagement, problem selection, and two sandbox case studies (individual and population-level predictions).

Main Results:

• Initial population-level analysis highlighted client data representation issues in EHRs.
• The project evolved from individual risk prediction for mental health decline post-diabetes diagnosis to organizational planning for mental health care capacity.

Conclusions:

• The co-development process yielded insights for future EHR-based decision support tool initiatives.
• The developed tool aims to support both diabetes and mental health care, and informs population-level capacity planning models.