Robert S. Rudin

@rsrudin on Twitter

Senior Information Scientist

Boston Office

Education

B.S. in electrical engineering, University of Rochester; S.M. in technology and policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. in technology, management, and policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

One Page Bio

Media Resources

This researcher is available for interviews.

To arrange an interview, contact the RAND Office of Media Relations at (310) 451-6913, or email media@rand.org.

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Overview

Robert S. Rudin is a senior information scientist at the RAND Corporation. He conducts research on health information technology.

Rudin's interests include how health IT can improve care, reduce costs, and engage patients between visits to their health care provider. He has conducted studies involving user needs assessment, health IT design and development, and evaluation. He uses quantitative and qualitative methods.

Prior to joining RAND, Rudin had internships at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and at the Center for IT Leadership at Partners Healthcare. He worked as a professional software engineer for several years.

Rudin completed a National Library of Medicine Fellowship and earned a Ph.D. in technology, management, and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Research Focus

Recent Media Appearances

Interviews: This Week In Health IT

Commentary: New England Journal of Medicine; The Health Care Blog

Commentary

How Smartphone Apps Could Help Keep Health Records Accurate
Electronic health records have helped streamline record keeping but providers aren't always able to reliably pull together records for the same patient from different hospitals, clinics, and doctor's offices. The growing use of smartphones offers a promising opportunity to improve record matching.
Oct 4, 2018 TechCrunch
The Little Exchange That Could...Transform the U.S. Health Care System
As Congress continues to think about whether and how to support the development of Health Information Exchanges, it should consider the commitment required to bring a mature statewide or national network of HIEs into practice. It should prioritize the evaluation of government-funded HIEs, so that research can help inform and foster return on investment for scarce taxpayer dollars.
Jan 28, 2015 The Health Care Blog
How Electronic Health Records Can Lead to Care Coordination
Inadequate care coordination is a major problem in health care delivery, but information technology is emerging as an important tool for enhancing coordination and, ultimately, improving the delivery of care, writes Robert Rudin.
Aug 13, 2013 The RAND Blog
Unraveling the IT Productivity Paradox—Lessons for Health Care
Although health care organizations have favorable characteristics that can maximize IT's benefits, the reengineering of health care delivery is only beginning, write Spencer Jones, Paul Heaton, Robert Rudin, and Eric Schneider.
Jun 14, 2012 New England Journal of Medicine

Publications

Journal Article
Assessment of Variation in Electronic Health Record Capabilities and Reported Clinical Quality Performance in Ambulatory Care Clinics, 2014–2017
Between 2014 and 2017, clinics with EHRs having greater capabilities had better quality measures than other clinics, but clinics that gained EHR capabilities during this time had smaller increases in quality that were not statistically significant.
May 4, 2021
Report
The Coronavirus Pandemic Highlights Why Family Caregivers Need to Be Integrated into the Health Care Team and Shows Us How to Make It Happen
The authors describe why, in light of COVID-19, it is more critical than ever to integrate family caregivers into patients' health care teams and highlight several solutions for accomplishing this goal.
Jan 5, 2021
Journal Article
Health Information Technology for Ambulatory Care in Health Systems
The relatively low uptake of health IT functionalities important to care improvement suggests substantial opportunities for further improving adoption of ambulatory health IT even among the current EHR users.
Dec 18, 2020
Journal Article
Optimizing Health IT to Improve Health System Performance: A Work in Progress
We describe activities that health systems are pursuing to better leverage health IT to improve performance, in a qualitative thematic approach.
Dec 4, 2020
Journal Article
Common Laboratory Results Frequently Misunderstood by a Sample of Mechanical Turk Users
Use of Mechanical Turk to determine how well patients understand common laboratory test results.
2019
Journal Article
Digital Health Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges in Rheumatology
Digital health technology offers enormous potential to improve rheumatology care but this potential has so far been largely unrealized.
Sep 24, 2020
Journal Article
Trends in the Use of Computerized Physician Order Entry by Health-System Affiliated Ambulatory Clinics in the United States, 2014–2016
Small practice size or not being part of a multi-hospital system are associated with lower use of computerized physician order entry. between 2014 and 2016. Less than optimal use in these environments may be harming patient outcomes.
Sep 11, 2020
Journal Article
Trends in the Use of Clinical Decision Support by Health System–Affiliated Ambulatory Clinics in the United States, 2014–2016
Use of clinical decision support (CDS) in ambulatory clinics is increasing but remains modest. The CDS function with the greatest use is basic medication screening, which increased from 52% of clinics nationally in 2014 to 61% in 2016.
2019
Journal Article
A Clinically Integrated Mhealth App and Practice Model for Collecting Patient-Reported Outcomes Between Visits for Asthma Patients: Implementation and Feasibility
Implementation of a clinically integrated mHealth app and practice model can achieve high patient retention and adherence to guideline-recommended asthma symptom monitoring, while minimally burdening clinicians.
2019
Journal Article
Level of Agreement on Health Information Technology Adoption and Use in Survey Data: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Ambulatory Clinics in 1 US State
Analyses of HIT survey findings should take into consideration the validity of the data used to develop estimates of prevalence and use.
Mar 22, 2019
Journal Article
Advancing a Nationwide Patient Matching Strategy
A nationwide strategy for improved patient matching would enable hospitals, technology developers, and the broader health care ecosystem to better link patients to their records to improve care coordination and reduce costs.
Aug 22, 2018
Report
Defining and Evaluating Patient-Empowered Approaches to Improving Record Matching
This study reviews possible patient-empowered approaches to medical record matching and recommends for further development and pilot testing a three-stage solution that uses mobile phones and app-based functionality.
Aug 22, 2018
Journal Article
Core Components for a Clinically Integrated mHealth App for Asthma Symptom Monitoring
Smartphone-based health apps - using patient reported outcomes - can help asthma patients monitor symptoms between doctor visits.
Dec 15, 2017
Journal Article
The Clinical Pharmacy Specialist: Part of the Solution
Efforts to create high-functioning primary care teams should take advantage of the knowledge and skills of clinical pharmacy specialists
Apr 19, 2017
Journal Article
Leveraging Telehealth to Bring Volunteer Physicians Into Underserved Communities
Organizations that use telehealth to address safety net clinic needs by recruiting retired or semi-retired doctor volunteers can help improve access to physicians in underserved areas while enriching the professional lives of clinicians.
Mar 16, 2017
Report
Lessons Learned from the MAVEN Project Pilot: Using Physician Volunteers to Increase Access to Care via Telehealth
The Medical Alumni Volunteer Expert Network (MAVEN) Project created a corps of experienced volunteer physicians to provide telehealth consults to providers in safety-net clinics. This evaluation of the program can inform quality-improvement efforts.
Dec 9, 2016
Report
Identifying and Coordinating Care for Complex Patients: Findings from the Leading Edge of Analytics and Health Information Technology
Analytics and HIT are currently being used in innovative ways to coordinate care for complex patients, but evidence of their effectiveness is lacking and important foundational work is still needed.
Sep 19, 2016
Journal Article
Accelerating Innovation in Health IT
Efforts to accelerate the innovation of health information technology (IT) products need long-term collaboration between developers and users, transformation of care processes in tandem with IT tools, and development of new funding models.
Sep 19, 2016
Report
National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet) Phase I: Final Evaluation Report
PCORnet, the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, seeks to conduct clinical trials and observational research quickly and at low cost. This report contains the results of a formative evaluation of PCORnet's implementation phase.
Dec 31, 2015
Report
Resources and Capabilities of the Department of Veterans Affairs to Provide Timely and Accessible Care to Veterans
The Department of Veterans Affairs health care system, with broad resources and capabilities, provides timely and high-quality care to most, but not all, patients. Meeting veterans' needs over the next five years will require additional capacity.
Dec 31, 2015
Report
Harnessing Private-Sector Innovation to Improve Health Insurance Exchanges
In this paper, analysts consider privately facilitated health insurance exchanges to address some challenges and deepen the impact of health care reform. In this model, the private sector assumes responsibility for peripheral exchange functions.
Nov 6, 2015
Report
Improving Hospital Efficiency Through Data-Driven Management: A Case Study of Health First, Florida
This report presents a case study of how one health system addressed resource challenges by using Lean thinking (focusing on process improvement, affecting both structural components and operational processes) enabled by information technology.
Oct 22, 2015
Journal Article
The Value of Health Information Technology: Filling the Knowledge Gap
Despite rapid growth in the rate of adoption of health information technology, and in the volume of evaluation studies, the existing knowledge base for the value of health IT is not advancing at a similar rate.
2014
Journal Article
Paying for Telemedicine
Telemedicine offers the potential for better care, lower costs, and increased convenience. Expanding existing fee-for-service payment models to include telemedicine may lead to its overuse.
Dec 23, 2014
Journal Article
Usage and Effect of Health Information Exchange: A Systematic Review
Health information exchange (HIE) is increasing in the United States, and it is incentivized by government policies. The authors systematically review and evaluate evidence of the use and effect of HIE on clinical care.
Dec 3, 2014
Report
Patient Safety in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Current Status and Opportunities for Improvement
In a RAND study about the landscape of patient safety in Massachusetts, researchers interviewed expert observers (patients, health care leaders, and others) about progress to date and future opportunities to produce safer patient care.
Dec 2, 2014
Research Brief
Continuity of Care and the Cost of Treating Chronic Disease
Modest improvements in continuity of care correlate with sizable reductions in service use, complications, and costs for Medicare patients with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and type 2 diabetes mellitus.
Jul 16, 2014
Report
Promoting Patient Safety Through Effective Health Information Technology Risk Management
The research team worked with 11 hospitals and ambulatory practices to evaluate a process improvement strategy and tools developed to help health care organizations diagnose, monitor, and mitigate health information technology-related safety risks.
Jul 15, 2014
Journal Article
Continuity and the Costs of Care for Chronic Disease
Modest differences in care continuity for Medicare beneficiaries are associated with sizable differences in costs, use, and complications.
Mar 17, 2014
Journal Article
Health Information Technology: An Updated Systematic Review with a Focus on Meaningful Use
Incentives offered by the U.S. government have spurred marked increases in use of health information technology (IT).
2014
Journal Article
Let the Left Hand Know What the Right Is Doing: A Vision for Care Coordination and Electronic Health Records
Using a simple framework, we describe a vision of information technology capabilities that could substantially improve four care coordination activities: identifying collaborators, contacting collaborators, collaborating, and monitoring.
2014
Journal Article
Health Information Technology Adoption Measurement Framework: Overall Guidance for HCIA Awardees
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)/Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) requested that RAND assist their HCIA Awardees in developing health information technology (HIT) adoption measures.
2013
Journal Article
Measuring Care Continuity: A Comparison of Claims-Based Methods
Assessing care continuity is important in evaluating the impact of health care reform and changes to health care delivery.
2013
Journal Article
Unraveling the IT Productivity Paradox -- Lessons for Health Care
Productivity gains that can be achieved by widely adopting health information technology are likely to come from the reengineering of health care and may require new measurement tools to accurately gauge their impact.
Jun 14, 2012
Journal Article
Simulation Suggests That Medical Group Mergers Won't Undermine the Potential Utility of Health Information Exchanges
Federal and state agencies are investing substantial resources in the creation of community health information exchanges, which are consortia that enable independent health care organizations to exchange clinical data.
Mar 1, 2012
Journal Article
Care Transitions as Opportunities for Clinicians to Use Data Exchange Service: How Often Do They Occur?
The electronic exchange of health information among healthcare providers has the potential to produce enormous clinical benefits and financial savings, although realizing that potential will be challenging.
Nov 1, 2011
Journal Article
Why Clinicians Use or Don't Use Health Information Exchange
The ED is one important place where an HIE may have an impact on patient care because many emergency patients are unfamiliar to ED facilities and important clinical information is often missing.
Jul 1, 2011
Journal Article
What Affects Clinicians' Usage of Health Information Exchange?
Clinicians, EHR and HIE product vendors and trainers should work toward integrating HIE into clinical workflows.
2011
Journal Article
The Litmus Test for Health Information Exchange Success: Will Small Practices Participate?
The movement to establish widespread health information exchange (HIE) in the United States has thus far shown mixed results.
Apr 1, 2010
Journal Article
Assessing the Value of Laboratory Electronic Data Interchange in the Department of Veterans Affairs
We modeled the adoption, costs and monetezied benefits of the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA's) internally developed Laboratory Electronic Data Interchange (LEDI) application from 2001-2007.
2010
Journal Article
Liability Coverage for Regional Health Information Organizations: Lessons from the AHRQ-funded State Regional Demonstration Projects in Health Information Technology and Other Community Efforts
This report will share findings from the field on how eight regional health information organizations (RHIOs) have navigated various issues and challenges associated with liability insurance for health information exchange (HIE).
Jun 1, 2009
Journal Article
Understanding the Decisions and Values of Stakeholders in Health Information Exchanges: Experiences from Massachusetts
The authors studied how health information exchange systems are established by examining the decisions of key stakeholders participating in a health information exchange pilot project in 3 Massachusetts communities.
May 1, 2009