PROCAIM, which stands for Patient-Reported Outcomes from Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine, is a Web-based data collection and information system. The practice of medicine continues to evolve at an ever-accelerating pace.  Correspondingly, patients are becoming more involved in their own health care and decision-making.  Their expectations for their care are dramatically changing and their satisfaction is driving treatment decisions.   The Internet is accelerating this evolution in the practice of medicine.  Patients are using the Internet to get information about their medical conditions.  Clinical practice groups are also using the Internet to share and coordinate their activities.  Researchers are using the Internet to conduct multi-site clinical trials involving large numbers of patients in diverse locations.

Believing that new technologies can only serve to make patients more active and satisfied participants in their care, we have created an Internet-based practice network of treatment providers, patients, and researchers.  PROCAIM utilizes reliable and valid instruments to collect information directly from patients about their symptoms and satisfaction with treatment and provides them the opportunity to track their outcomes and communicate with their caregivers.  
 
PROCAIM collects a wide range of data using standardized questionnaires that address changes over time in symptom severity, mood, stress and coping skills, and quality of life. Patients can access PROCAIM through the PROCAIM web site, www.procaim.org. The PROCAIM Network is a multi-clinic research project linking patients, treatment providers, and researchers interested in improving health and well-being through the various integrative therapies, including mind/body approaches and complementary and alternative medicine. The PROCAIM Network facilitates study of the effects of various therapies on patient self-reported outcomes and symptoms. The network facilitates reserach into the interactions among stress, coping, symptoms, and treatments by collecting data from a large and varied patient population. The PROCAIM database serves as a research resource for effectiveness research and hypothesis-driven collaborative studies on the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in symptom presentation and treatment response.

 
The PROCAIM system was developed by the UCLA Computing Technology Research Labs (CTRL). All data are maintained by CTRL, which provides a HIPAA-compliant, secure hosting environment with multiple data backups. CTRL is a software development group within the DGSOM that primarily provides open source solutions to research and clinical data collection, management and reporting problems. CTRL developers have used the AOLserver and TCL to build web-based applications since the early days when the software was called Naviserver. CTRL has developed many OpenACS packages and naturally selected the OpenACS 5.1 (the current version at the time) as the framework upon which to develop the PROCAIM Network. The site has an Oracle 9i backend RDBMS.
 
The PROCAIM database core consists of a library of self-report questionnaires. The library of questionnaires has been selected on the basis of available evidence of validity, standardization, commonness of use, public domain access, and instrument length. These instruments include assessments of quality of life, somatic symptom severity, depression and anxiety, coping skills, early life trauma, current stress, and specific symptoms including pain, sleep problems and fatigue.

The resulting database represents a Common Data Set across all participating clinics and patient populations. This data set contains general demographic information including age, gender, education, ethnicity; a brief review of current symptoms, a brief description of treatment history, and longitudinal information obtained from the self-report questionnaires at baseline and at intervals over one year.

Clinicians or clinic coordinators can log in to review patients’ information and to provide diagnoses, clinical judgment of treatment outcome, and primary treatment modality (e.g., acupuncture, medication type and dose, biofeedback, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy).

In addition to the above protocol, participating clinics can work with the PROCAIM research team to include their own instrumentation and protocols.

PROCAIM Demo

INSTRUCTIONS for PATIENTS AND PROVIDERS

• Click “Integrative Medicine Clinic” on the left side of the screen
• Enter email address: patienttest@ucla.edu
• Enter the password:  temp
• Click “Log In”
  

To view the system as a care provider, log in at  http://demo.procaim.org/.

• Click “Integrative Medicine Clinic” on the left side of the screen
• Enter email address: firstprovider@ucla.edu
• Enter the password:  temp
• Click “Log In”

• Select  “Enroll New Patient Under “Patient Administration” heading,” link.
• Enter patient name and email address, and verify patient consented (Approved).

The system id designed to  automatically generate a password “temp” and send an email to the patient.  The e-mail contains instructions to log in as a returning user using the “temp” password, change the password, explore the site, and begin completing the questionnaires.

       To add diagnosis and treatment information on an existing patient

• Select  “Patients Approved Report” link under “Patient Administration” heading,
• Select  “Diagnosis” link to the right of the patient’s name and email address.
  

Complete the questionnaire, which includes questions regarding the patient’s primary diagnosis, secondary diagnoses, other functional disorders, treatments, and prediction of progress.

Please contact Robert Dennis at buddy@ucla.edu if you have any questions about the PROCAIM Network.