Electronic medical records (EMR) contain sensitive personal information. Because EMRs are subject to confidentiality requirements, accessing and analyzing EMR databases is a privilege given to only a small number of individuals. Individuals who work at institutions that do not have access to EMR systems have no opportunity to gain hands-on experience with this valuable resource. Simulated medical databases are currently available; however, they are difficult to configure and are limited in their resemblance to real clinical databases. In this workshop I will introduce EMRBots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMRBots) and discuss potential use cases that could be developed at the hackathon, including the concept of extending Turing Test when applied to health care data (see: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3176926.3168260).
By the end of the workshop, hackers will be able to work with pre-populated virtual patient databases and generate new virtual cohorts.