Impacts of structuring the electronic health record: A systematic review protocol and results of previous reviews

The 12 step review protocol resulted in a variety of reviews of different ways to structure EHR data. None of them compared outcomes of different structuring methods; all had a narrower definition of the Intervention (a specific EHR structure) and Outcome (a specific impact category). Several reviews missed a clear connection between the data structures (interventions) and outcomes, indicating that the methods and applications for structuring patient data have rarely been viewed as independent variables. The review protocol should be defined in a manner that allows replication of the review. There are different ways of structuring patient data with varying impacts, which should be distinguished in further empirical studies, as well as reviews.