Summary:
Researchers in the UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology have developed a new clinical decision support system for improved menopause care.
Background:
Each year, approximately 1.3 million women in the United States enter menopause. This is often accompanied by symptoms such as hot flashes, mood changes, and sleep issues. In addition, other health conditions can arise during menopause, including bone density loss, cardiovascular diseases, and genitourinary issues. The wide range of specialties that menopause complications fall under can complicate patient access to proper medical treatment. Since potentially serious complications caused by menopause are often misdiagnosed and under-treated, many women do not receive appropriate medical care. There is an urgent need to develop better clinical systems to integrate menopausal care to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.
Innovation:
UCLA Researchers led by Assistant Clinical Professor Rajita Patil have developed an innovative decision support protocol and technology aid to help menopause care providers deliver comprehensive and individualized menopause care to patients during standard 30-minute visits. The clinical algorithm processes patient questionnaire data with empirical lab results to generate specialty reports for core menopause providers in areas of bone, sleep, breast, cardiovascular, genitourinary, lifestyle, and integrative health. The algorithm provides color-coded reports based on urgency of intervention, allowing for improved triaging and point-of-care resource allocation. The custom generated reports, taken together with the patient questionnaire, allow the Importantly, the protocol standardizes care methodology to overcome bias and can be easily scaled to other institutions with specialty collaborations. This system enables more precise menopause management by providing comprehensive reports to both care providers and patients.
Potential Applications:
• Standardized menopausal care
• Electronic medical record scraping
• Clinical decision support systems
• Holistic care recommendations
Advantages:
• Integrates questionnaire data with lab results
• Scalable to many institutions
• Supports providers with objective decision methodology
• Color-coded for ease of interpretation
Development-To-Date:
The software has been designed with workflows for menopause care in nine specialties.
Reference:
UCLA Case No. 2024-193
Lead Inventor:
Assistant Clinical Professor Rajita Patil, MD, UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology