ABSTRACT
Assessing the health and healthcare of the nation’s children depends critically on data that are timely, relevant, and accurate. Currently, surveillance and policy decisions rely heavily on labor-intensive periodic and ad hoc surveys using cross-sectional designs [1]. However, electronic health records (EHRs) are rapidly coming into wider use as the medium in which information about care of patients is recorded [2]; in the United States, the ‘Meaningful Use’ initiative for EHR systems [3] [4] is providing a significant stimulus for this process. The shift of health information into electronic forms more amenable to analysis and exchange creates opportunities to improve healthcare quality, develop new methods for clinical research, and follow the health of patient populations using EHR-derived data [5]. Several policy analysts have suggested that multi-institutional sharing of EHR data presents a new paradigm for advancing population health [6] [7] [8]. In particular, greater facility with EHR data is critical to achieving a learning health system [9] [10], in which information derived from clinical care continuously supports advances in medical understanding and delivery of health care. These advances will be of particular value to child health research, much of which relies on longitudinal changes in growth, health, and development.
