Using Institutional Databases to Study Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

DB Historically, it has been difficult for individual health care providers to have a comprehensive quality assessment of their practices. For example, knowing the success rate of treating a certain condition was challenging because providers did not typically keep track of the individual outcomes of patients and then look at them in a collective fashion. Measurement is important in order to achieve quality improvement, which is why the field of gastroenterology is presently being asked to develop quality measures. If providers could track their practices, examine medication rates in their patients, and follow the outcomes of concerning laboratory values, it would be possible to determine when success is achieved, as well as poor outcomes when patients are not doing well. Therefore, the ability to look at data in a comprehensive fashion provides the opportunity to improve the quality of care, optimize patient treatment, and conduct research. In addition, institutional databases provide a platform for discovery, standardization of care, and optimization of health economics. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has embraced evidence-based medicine but still needs more data, particularly in regard to the heterogeneous subgroups of patients who have mild to severe lifetime clinical courses of their illness, to answer many of the questions that are challenging physicians on a routine basis. In my opinion, databases are essential for providing real-world data and helping health care providers answer relevant clinical questions quickly and efficiently.