UNIVERSAL MEDICAL RECORD SEARCH ENGINE (UMERSE)
UMERSE was engineered from the ground up to provide an effective and efficient means for searching through clinical free-text data in an electronic medical record system.
UMERSE provides sophisticated yet simple to use tools for searching the clinical documents in the electronic medical record. It dramatically speeds the ability to conduct chart reviews, and maintains the accuracy required to sustain a robust clinical or research environment.
Developed at a top research institution
UMERSE is based on technology originally developed by the University of Michigan’s Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Bioinformatics Core. Our company has licensed this innovative technology and developed a tool to support commercial customers. We have expertise in working with Institutional Review Boards (IRB), and can provide an optimized statement to include in an IRB application to streamline the approval process.
Versatile and useful
UMERSE has supported multiple activities including clinical research, patient recruitment for clinical trials, patient care, quality improvement projects, and even billing. There are many uses for UMERSE; almost any situation which requires review of a patient’s medical record can benefit from a search using this product.
Loaded with “intelligent” features
UMERSE provides multiple features to help you get your work done faster. It contains an ever-growing compendium of medical taxonomy, synonyms, and acronyms. For example, when you type in “pneumonia”, UMERSE will also suggest “PNA”. UMERSE can spell-check your search terms, and it can even look for spelling errors in the source medical record itself. Need to limit the date range of the documents? UMERSE can do that. Need to specify different colors for highlighting search terms? UMERSE can do that too. You can even share your search terms (aka “Bundles”), with other users. This will help you standardize on how your team searches for certain concepts.
Secure and HIPAA compliant
UMERSE was designed from the beginning to be a secure system, and to be compliant with HIPAA regulations. This is a must when dealing with Protected Health Information (PHI). All users must have valid access, and the system maintains an extensive audit trail of search activity. Patient record access by users can easily be monitored.
Significant time savings
UMERSE saves time. Two surveys of UMERSE users were conducted (in 2008 and 2009), and in both cases the typical user reported an average time saving of 2.5 hours per day! That leaves plenty of extra time to focus on other important tasks.
A proven track record
UMERSE works. Users of UMERSE have been able to secure National Institute of Health (NIH) grant funding to conduct studies that would not have been possible without the use of this tool. Researchers and clinicians have been able to publish and present numerous research studies using UMERSE. Several groups have studied UMERSE efficiency and found it to be just as accurate as manual chart review, but requiring only a fraction of the time.
