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Principal Investigator: MATTHEW H SAMORE
Organization: VA SALT LAKE CITY HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Fiscal Year: 2024
Funding agency: Veterans Affairs
The Informatics, Decision-Enhancement, and Analytic Sciences (IDEAS) Center of Innovation creates a
dynamic environment within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) where informatics is tightly integrated
with health services research and other disciplines. Biomedical informatics is a unifying theme of the IDEAS
Center, as many of our investigators are both health services researchers and informaticians, engaging in
research that bridges both fields. This overlap reflects the historical prominence of informatics at the VA Salt
Lake City Health Care System and our close affiliation with VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure
(VINCI).The IDEAS Center seeks to drive transformation of healthcare delivery in the Veterans Health
Administration through an integrated portfolio of translational research closely tied to operational partnerships:
• Apply qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry to elicit stakeholder perspectives, characterize clinical
gaps, and identify information needs.
• Generate new knowledge to improve prediction of impacts of health system changes, to support clinical
practice improvement, and to guide mitigation of adverse outcomes in Veterans.
• Design and implement innovative solutions to high priority problems, advancing VHA as a learning health
care system.
• Collaborate with operational partners to disseminate interventions that enhance the quality, efficiency, and
safety of health care delivery in the Veterans Health Administration and improve Veteran health.
IDEAS includes two areas of focused research, one emerging research area, and five methodological cores.
Our research reflects our investigators’ clinical expertise, coupled with our methodological strengths in
information visualization, natural language processing, decision-support system design, population analytics,
qualitative research, and pharmacoepidemiology. Our methods cores highlight our expanded research activities,
recruitment of new investigators, and increased emphasis on implementation science. Focus Area 1, Combating
Antibiotic Resistance, integrates our original focus areas, cognitive support for therapeutic decision-making
and healthcare-associated infections, and links with our new VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative
(QUERI) Program, Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance through Rapid Implementation of Available Guidelines
and Evidence (CARRIAGE), to implement research innovations into the field. Our vision is of a transformed
VHA, recognized for its national leadership and success in antibiotic stewardship and infection prevention.
Focus Area 2, Mitigating Health Risks in Veterans across Periods of Vulnerability, extends our Center’s
previous research on post-deployment and rural health, integrating the expertise of our recently recruited junior
and senior investigators in addiction medicine, traumatic brain injury, and mental health. We will leverage new
types of data and state-of-the-art analytical approaches to better characterize the dynamic nature of risk and to
improve the accuracy of predictive algorithms for adverse outcomes, including suicidality and overdose. We
will focus on periods of vulnerability that are currently difficult to track, such as separation from military and
transition to community care. Finally, our understanding of sociotechnical systems in health care and of
hazards associated with health information technology motivates our emerging research area: Improving
Medication Safety as the VA Transitions to a New Electronic Health Record. Building on our expertise in
informatics, patient safety, and surveillance, we will use simulation tools to evaluate potential risks and statistical
models to estimate rates of actual events. Our goal is to anticipate the consequences of VHA’s implementation
of a new commercial electronic health record and to help ensure that this modernization effort leads to high
quality, safe care. Our research activities are all highly collaborative and closely connected to our operational
partnerships. Our partners trust us to be an ongoing source of innovation, which fits perfectly with our culture.
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