Of the millions of colonoscopies and endoscopic procedures performed in the U.S., there is very little information on the cause and result of the procedures once they are performed. To figure out which patient is likely to experience side effects from the procedure, David Lieberman, M.D., head of OHSU’s Division of Gastroenterology, led the initiative in 1994 to create a national endoscopic database repository to learn more about patients receiving gastrointestinal procedures. With help from Cynthia Morris, Ph.D., vice chair, and Judy Logan, M.D., associate professor, both in the OHSU Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology department, they spent several years creating the Clinical Outcomes Research Initiative (CORI) software with the intent of studying gastrointestinal endoscopies, esophagogastroduodenoscopy, and colonoscopies more closely.
The CORI software serves as an easy-to-use specialty electronic health record system for clinicians to learn more about their patients to help screen, diagnose, and treat patients with gastrointestinal diseases. Information that can be found in this software can include the patient’s medical history, the cause and result of present and past gastrointestinal procedures, information about the clinical site, and so on. As this software includes additional information that standard electronic health records omit, it serves as an important tool for clinicians to diagnose and treat their patients, ultimately improving patient care. The CORI software has received major funding from the NIH (U01 DK057132) through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases since 1999 to support this work.
The CORI endoscopic reporting software has been distributed to a wide array of participating clinical sites ranging from government facilities, academic centers, hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and to small specialty and private practices. The data entered into this software can be formatted into reports that serve as valuable tools and are able to feed into each clinical site’s internal electronic health record database. Data from all aspects of the procedure can be logged and queried at the site level; data points such as findings, pre-procedure practices, length of procedure, and resulting pathology reports can all be entered into the CORI database.
Though after 20 years of effort, the CORI research initiative began to wind down when Logan announced her plans to retire and cease seeking continued grant funding. Determined to keep the CORI software in operation and recognizing the need for ongoing technical support to allow for that to happen, Lieberman and Logan contacted Arvin Paranjpe, a senior technology development manger handling the technology’s intellectual property, to explore other options for the CORI software. Together, they strategized a new path forward and determined the need to move CORI from a research-based initiative to a commercially viable product.
Through successful negotiations with a Portland-based technology advancement firm, Due North Innovation, a license was forged to create a commercial product and company called CORI2. In addition to managing the user support and software system maintenance, the team at CORI2 is enhancing the features and functionality of the software to create a more robust system to fully address current user needs. The CORI2 software currently serves over 70 academic institutions, hospitals, and clinics in the United States.
