© Ascend Media

growing body of research is documenting the value of the electronic health record (EHR) for improving clinical care through alerts, reminders, and other forms of clinical decision support.1 The outcomes from these studies include enhanced error detec-tion, improved adherence, and reduced cost. However, the potential benefits of the EHR do not stop at direct patient care. There is increasing recognition that sec-ondary use of the EHR and its data can provide additional value.2 Until now, there has been little research to substanti-ate these claims. The study reported in this issue by Pakhomov et al3 is a good step in this direction. These authors demonstrate that the text processing of the EHR nar-rative is effective in identifying patients with heart failure who may be candidates for clinical research. The text pro-cessing approach is more accurate than traditional coding from billing records and is available sooner. Furthermore, the authors developed both high-sensitivity and high-specificity approaches. This research gives credence to the notion of secondary use of data for clinical research. Clinical research, of cour e, is only one such use. Secondary uses of data could include qual-ity measurement, public health surveillance, and patient access to data about their illness. The American Medical Informatics Associatio