Abstract
Electronic health information systems can increase the ability of health-care organizations to investigate the effects of clinical interventions. The authors present an organizing framework that integrates outcomes and informatics research paradigms to guide knowledge discovery in electronic clinical databases. They illustrate its application using the example of hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPU). The Knowledge Discovery through Informatics for Comparative Effectiveness Research (KDI-CER) framework was conceived as a heuristic to conceptualize study designs and address potential methodological limitations imposed by using a single research perspective. Advances in informatics research can play a complementary role in advancing the field of outcomes research including CER. The KDI-CER framework can be used to facilitate knowledge discovery from routinely collected electronic clinical data.