Researchers from University of Pittsburgh Describe Findings in Electronic Medical Records [Partnerships With Health Plans to Link Data From Electronic Health Records to Claims for Research Using PCORnet®]: Information Technology – Electronic Medical Records

2026 JAN 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Fresh data on Information Technology - Electronic Medical Records are presented in a new report. According to news reporting originating from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Health plans and public payers (ie, Medicare and Medicaid) maintain records of millions of transactions between patients and health care providers from claims submitted by hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and other care settings. A major use of claims data in research is to supplement the information contained in patients’ medical records.”

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the University of Pittsburgh, “PCORnet is a large, distributed ‘network of networks’ funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to improve the nation’s capacity to efficiently conduct definitive health research. Seventy-eight partner health systems nationwide map clinical data from their electronic health records to the PCORnet® Common Data Model (CDM) so that the data may be efficiently used for research purposes. The ability to link data from electronic health records in the PCORnet infrastructure with complementary data from other sources, such as health insurance claims, further enhances the capacity for comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER). This commentary showcases the health plan partnerships of 3 PCORnet® Clinical Research Networks (CRNs)-REACHnet, PaTH, and OneFlorida+-that enhance the capacity for CER involving linked clinical and claims data. We describe the transferable regulatory and technical infrastructures in place to efficiently link data for research purposes.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “To demonstrate these partnerships and data linkage in action, we also discuss research use cases pertaining to weight-related outcomes and diabetes that align with payers’ interests in chronic disease management.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Partnerships With Health Plans to Link Data From Electronic Health Records to Claims for Research Using PCORnet®. Medical Care, 2026;64. Medical Care can be contacted at: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Two Commerce Sq, 2001 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA. (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins - www.lww.com; Medical Care - http://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/pages/default.aspx)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Kathleen McTigue, University of Pittsburgh Dept. of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA. Additional authors for this research include Elizabeth Nauman, Elizabeth A. Shenkman, Djeneba Audrey Djibo and Thomas W. Carton.

Publisher contact information for the journal Medical Care is: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Two Commerce Sq, 2001 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)