Using electronic health records (EHRs) to gather data on sexual orientation and gender identity in federally funded surveys could help providers address specific healthcare issues among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals, according to a new report released by the Institute for Medicine (IOM). These questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, however, should be standardized to allow for the comparison and combination of data across large studies to analyze the unique needs of the LGBT population, added the report, which was prepared for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine specific research needs. FierceEMR