Initiative will offer healthcare providers insight and clinical decision information for patient populations with respiratory conditions via the Practice Fusion electronic health record (EHR) platform

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – April 13th, 2015 – Practice Fusion, the nation’s largest cloud-based electronic health records (EHR) platform, and AstraZeneca today announced a Population Health Management (PHM) program that arms members of Practice Fusion’s community of 112,000 medical professionals with data-driven insights that can help them in their efforts to improve care for patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The program, developed by Practice Fusion and sponsored by AstraZeneca, identifies patients whose current asthma or COPD care does not meet evidence-based clinical guidelines, and then alerts physicians at the point of care via patient charts within the EHR platform. The alerts are based on clinical guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease.

As part of this program, practitioners will also have access to a dashboard within the Practice Fusion EHR platform, which includes real-time and aggregate views of their patients’ health. Through this dashboard, providers will be able to see the percentage of their patient populations with asthma and COPD, as well as the percentage of those patients whose care meets evidence-based clinical guidelines. Clinicians will be able to compare their patient populations’ percentages with the median percentages of similar patient populations across all other providers using the Practice Fusion EHR.

“AstraZeneca has a strong and established commitment to respiratory disease and is squarely focused on understanding and helping to meet the needs of people facing serious health challenges like asthma and COPD,” said John McCarthy, vice president of Global Commercial Excellence for AstraZeneca. “By supporting this important initiative, we believe that we can continue to make true progress in helping healthcare providers in their efforts to improve patient care.”

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, nearly 25 million Americans suffer from asthma, which accounts for more than 3,300 deaths each year. A March 2013 report from the American Lung Association found that COPD is the third leading cause of death in the U.S and that more than 12 million adult Americans have been diagnosed with COPD.

“PHM programs like this empower our providers with data by giving them a quantified view into their patients’ health, which ultimately has the potential to help them identify at-risk patients and promote treatment compliance,” said Ryan Howard, founder and CEO, Practice Fusion. “With our EHR platform managing more than five million patient visits a month, we’re in a prime position to partner with our providers and play an important role in aiding their efforts to improve patient care.”

For more information on PHM programs with Practice Fusion, please visit /life-sciences/.

About Practice Fusion

Practice Fusion is the #1 cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) platform for doctors and patients, with a mission of connecting doctors, patients and data to drive better health and save lives. A driving force in modernizing American health care, Practice Fusion is used by a community of more than 112,000 monthly active medical professionals with over 100 million patient records under management. In 2014, Practice Fusion’s EHR facilitated over 56 million patient visits (approximately 6% of all ambulatory visits in the US) and is fastest growing EHR in the US.

About AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is a global, innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialization of prescription medicines, primarily for the treatment of cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, inflammation, autoimmune, oncology, infection and neuroscience diseases. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more information please visit www.astrazeneca-us.com.

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