Transformational Research To Advance Chronic Disease Prevention & Management Through Electronic Medical Records: TRACER

While the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) by primary health care practitioners is increasing in Canada, adoption levels are still low overall, and use of advanced EMR features is even more limited. EMRs are one of the few tools available that can assist primary health care practitioners in caring for people who have chronic diseases. However, variable and incomplete EMR use could affect the ability of primary health care practitioners to provide improved chronic disease care. Additionally, there are many unanswered questions about EMRs in primary health care and a lack of research capacity to answer them. Given these trends, there is a need to both increase the information we have about the use of EMRs in chronic disease prevention and management, and to build primary health care EMR research capacity in Canada. To address these needs, we will implement a five year program of research, led by an inter-disciplinary and inter-jurisdictional research team, called Transformational Research to Advance Chronic Disease Prevention & Management through Electronic Medical Records (TRACER). The TRACER research program will answer the question: How can EMRs be best used by primary health care practitioners to improve chronic disease prevention and management in Canada? We will accomplish this goal by: 1) conducting research designed to improve the use of EMRs; 2) creating a training program to develop primary health care EMR research capacity, and 3) implementing activities to ensure that the research results which have been shown to improve EMR use, are taken-up more broadly by primary health care practitioners across Canada.