electronic Primary Care Research Network (ePCRN)

Brenda Hudson, M.S.
Kevin Peterson, M.D.

Say that a new development in diabetes management was discovered in the lab today. How long would it take before the finding is translated into standard practice in primary care clinics? Six months? One year? Five years? Ten?

According to the Federation of Practice Based Research Networks (FPBRN), it typically takes 17 years to get from the research lab into practice (Peterson, 2005). To narrow the gap between research and practice, physician and researcher Kevin Peterson is leading an interdisciplinary team to develop an electronic network using Internet2 technology that will connect primary care physicians to researchers conducting randomized clinical trials. This network, the electronic Primary Care Research Network (ePCRN), aims to accelerate the movement of researcher from laboratory bench to patient bedside. It is funded by the NIH’s Roadmap initiative “Re-engineering the Clinical Research Enterprise.”

The project offers great potential to study how Internet technologies may help facilitate clinical research. Areas to examine include interplay between professionals, between primary care and research, between research and practice, and between technology and care. Previous research has touched on some areas of interplay; for instance, Marks, Conlon, & Ruburg, 2001, discuss how electronic networks enhance recruitment opportunities; Slatkoff, Curtis, & Coker, 1994, examine the ethical dilemmas of physicians acting as researchers in their own practice; and Tierney & Taylor, 1991, examine the collaborative, inter-professional relationships between physicians and researchers.

The ePCRN, however, offers a convergence of all these elements in a single project aimed at linking primary care and research. Brenda Hudson, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Rhetoric, has begun a pilot ethnographic study. By attending weekly planning meeting and interviewing key members of the ePCRN team, she is developing an ethnographic narrative that will follow the development of the infrastructure into the implementation of the network at the primary care and research level, providing an opportunity to examine these areas in depth. Preliminary findings have identified areas for further research, including types of technical problems, use of metaphors, project complexity, and roles of team members—areas that also may be useful in non-clinical use of technology.

REFERENCES

Brenan, PF & Strombom, I. (1998). Improving health care by understanding patient preferences: the role of computer technology. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, 5(3): 257–262.

Peterson, KA. (2005). Chair of the Federation of Practice Based Research Networks (FPBRN). Interview on March 30, 2005.

Slatkoff, SF, Curtis, P, & Coker A. (1994). Patients as subjects for research: ethical dilemmas for the primary care clinician-investigator. Journal of the AmericanBoard of Family Practice, 7(3):196-201 .

Tierney, AJ, & Taylor, J. (1991). Research in practice: an ‘experiment’ in researcher- practitioner collaboration. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 16(5): 506-10.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). (2003). Re-engineering theClinical Research Enterprise. Retrieved March 12, 2005 from http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/clinicalresearch/index.asp

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