SlicerDicer Reveals Practice-Based Data

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SlicerDicer Reveals Practice-Based Data

Christina DuVernay

Date: 08/31/2017

“Useful. But fun, too”: This is how Diana Gumas describes SlicerDicer, a tool in Epic that allows a provider to tap into patient data to investigate clinical conjectures or make new discoveries about patient populations. Aimed primarily at ambulatory physicians who want to look at trends in their patients, SlicerDicer can also be useful in an inpatient setting or for research, says Gumas, who is a senior IT director at the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research and directs its Center for Clinical Data Analysis.

“If you’re a clinician and you think you are seeing a trend, perhaps an increase in side effects associated with a particular medication, you can look at your own patient population or look at de-identified records in the entire patient population in Epic to investigate,” Gumas says.

For example, patients with hyperlipidemia are commonly given statins to help lower blood cholesterol levels, but muscle pain is a common side effect. SlicerDicer can be used to look at the prevalence of muscle pain with various statins to see if there is a higher incidence of muscle pain associated with certain types.

Another example: Has smoking cessation improved lung function in patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)? In SlicerDicer, a physician can create two populations: one composed of patients with COPD who are current everyday smokers, and one of patients with COPD who are former smokers. Then, by applying a filter comparing FEV1/FVC ratios, she can see that a greater percentage of former smokers have normal FEV1/FVC ratios. (See image.)

“SlicerDicer allows physicians to show patients results, too, to motivate behavior change,” says Gumas.

It is also useful for follow-up, she points out. “Say the FDA issues a drug warning. You can use SlicerDicer to identify all of your patients on that medication.”

Updated daily, SlicerDicer is available to anyone with an Epic log-in and access to reporting features.

For more, visit http://slicerdicer.johnshopkins.edu.