John T. Finnell
- Adjunct Professor of Informatics
Dr. Finnell is a graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine and board certified in Emergency Medicine. He is interested in the application of medical informatics to the practice of Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Finnell joined the Institute in 2002 where his research activities focused on building the infrastructure necessary to capture emergency department visit data. The departmental tracking system known as "WizErD" began capturing visit data on July 15th, 2003.
His first publication entitled "Community Clinical Data Exchange for Emergency Medicine Patients" explored the pattern of emergency healthcare delivery across Indianapolis over a one year period. They found that one-fourth of the emergency department patients with more than one visit also visited one of the other five hospital systems. These patients could potentially benefit the most from a shared clinical data network.
Currently Dr. Finnell is working on standardizing emergency department data in order to implement treatment guidelines established by ACEP, the American College of Emergency Physicians, which are initiated by the patient's chief complaint and triage data. He plans to augment the standard order set with "suggested" orders defined by these guidelines, and customized to the patient through their electronic medical record.
