Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) needed a unique, flexible online tool to track patient-reported outcomes and pain levels for its Sickle Cell study. DWC created a HIPAA compliant mobile site to provide CHOA with the opportunity to collect and analyze an immense amount of data as shown in this case study.

After receiving a grant for a Sickle Cell study, the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) was searching for a method to track patient-reported outcomes and pain levels. CHOA aimed to collect information regarding medication consumption and patient pain both prior to and following bone marrow transplantation.

There were four goals this reporting method needed to meet to be reliable. It must 1) provide patients easy access; 2) be HIPAA compliant; 3) promote online collaboration; and 4) have the flexibility to adapt to future conditions.

CHOA envisioned implementing an online tool that would be capable of enrolling patients, sending alerts and collecting desired data. The site needed to expand to accompany an unlimited number of related studies for a large number of organizations.

With the ability to enroll additional organizations and studies, Children’s would be presented the opportunity to collect and analyze an immense amount of valuable data. Tracking both their patients’ pain and that of other studies will give unique insights into patient pain treatments.

This pain dairy not only allows CHOA to track the progress of their study, but expand the tracking method to numerous organizations. It started as CHOA conducting and tracking one study with two staff users. It has now grown to 97 organizations managing eight studies with 136 staff users today.

This was accomplished without any enhancements or developments to the tracking site. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta has complete control allowing them the ability to expand at their own pace.

Data Warehouse Consultants (DWC) created a user-friendly, HIPAA-compliant web application where patients could log their information and staff users could view their data. First, patients are prompted to confirm they have taken their medication at the correct times. Afterwards, they complete a pain survey indicating: where pain is felt, what it feels like, what may have caused the pain, if the pain has it affected their sleep, etc.

On the backend, an organization’s staff can examine the information input by the patients enrolled for their specific organization. CHOA researchers have access to the information and data from every organization’s study. Having access to more data allows Children’s to enhance insights and better its study.