Table 1.

Comparison of data sources for outcomes research

Data source	Benefits	Challenges
Electronic medical records (EMRs)	Data available to reflect entire care experience; data can be analyzed in an ongoing and real-time basis for entire populations under care; may improve depth and breadth of outcomes studies; used with e-prescribing can reduce adverse drug events, medical errors and redundant tests	Converting paper-based systems to electronic; collecting and storing data in a standardized format; Certification to ensure security and privacy of EMR systems; interoperability; slow adoption
Paper records	Captures clinical characteristics and prescribing patterns	Accessing and use of data requires significant time commitment; difficult to merge with claims data; increased chance for missing/incomplete data; limits sample sizes; costly to extract data
Medical and pharmacy claims	Captures real-world utilization patterns; encompass a wealth of variables and analyses of these data can be used for benchmarking purposes	Lag time in the availability of information about new therapies; does not capture clinical experience; data limited to patients with adjudicated claims
Primary data collection	Ability to structure assessment to capture variables of interest; ability to measure variables or characteristics that may not be contained in a medical chart or claims database	Difficulty with patient recruitment; time and resources intensive to collect and analyze data