Patent ID: 8595028

Claim:
A system for performing medical research over an extended computer network, the system comprising: an enhanced services server built on the same architecture as a plurality of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, the plurality of EHR systems being configured to capture patient data for a plurality of general patients at a plurality of corresponding healthcare provider sites during encounters with those patients, said plurality of EHR systems being configured to capture and transmit the patient data in a common data format that specifies information to be collected and a format for the information to be collected, and the enhanced services server being in electronic data communication with the plurality of EHR systems and the one or more research systems via a network connection and being configured to transmit and receive the patient data in the common data format and to perform the steps of: identifying a plurality of qualifying patients from among the plurality of general patients that qualify for the medical research; electronically receiving the one or more electronic documents in the common data format from a research system via the network connection, the one or more electronic documents including one or more first fields and one or more second fields for completion with patient data that is related to the medical research; automatically populating the one or more first fields in each of the one or more electronic documents with patient data in the common data format for a corresponding one of the plurality of qualifying patients, the patient data being related to the medical research and having been captured with at least one of the plurality of EHR systems during previous encounters with the plurality of qualifying patients; electronically transmitting the one or more electronic documents that were automatically populated with patient data for each of the qualifying patients to at least one EHR system via the network connection, the at least one of the plurality of EHR systems being used to complete the one or more second fields in each of the one or more electronic documents with patient data related to the medical research during subsequent encounters with the plurality of qualifying patients; electronically receiving the one or more electronic documents from the at least one EHR system via the network connection, the one or more electronic documents electronically received from the at least one of the plurality of EHR systems having the one or more first fields and one or more second fields completed; and electronically transmitting the one or more electronic documents with the one or more first fields and one or more second fields completed back to the research system via the network connection.