Menopause is missing from most electronic health records, study finds

by University of Colorado Anschutz

edited by Robert Egan

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Menopause is frequently missing from women's electronic health records, according to a University of Colorado Anschutz study of nearly 396,000 women participating in the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program.

Researchers found that menopause appeared nearly seven times more often in participant surveys than in electronic health records (EHRs). The findings, published in Menopause, highlight both the potential of large-scale research programs to improve understanding of menopause and the need to routinely capture reproductive health information.

"Ultimately, we cannot study what we do not measure. We cannot treat what we do not know," said Audrey Hendricks, associate professor of bioinformatics at CU Anschutz and the study's principal investigator. "Menopause has enormous implications for women's health, but if we don't consistently capture when menopause occurs and other important reproductive health information, we limit our ability to understand how this transition affects disease risk and health outcomes."

Menopause is a physiological transition that can affect cardiometabolic health and many other aspects of women's health. Yet relatively little is known about how factors such as the timing and type of menopause influence health outcomes across diverse populations.

Large-scale initiatives such as the NIH All of Us Research Program offer an opportunity to study those questions by bringing together information from participant surveys, electronic health records and genomic data. But researchers can answer menopause-related health questions using these datasets only when key reproductive health information is available.

How often is menopause documented in electronic health records?

Researchers compared menopause-related information reported by participants through surveys with menopause diagnoses recorded in their EHRs.

They identified approximately 193,000 menopause observations in survey data, compared with roughly 28,000 menopause diagnoses in EHR data. Menopause was documented in EHRs for only about 7% of women in the dataset.

Nearly all participants with a menopause diagnosis in their EHR also reported menopause in survey data, suggesting that EHR diagnoses generally aligned with participants' own reports when the information was present. However, far fewer women had menopause documented in their electronic health records.

Important details about menopause were also frequently unavailable in EHR data, including age at menopause, an important factor researchers may want to examine when studying women's risk of chronic disease.

Why does missing menopause data matter for women's health research?

Missing menopause information can make it more difficult for researchers to study how the menopause transition relates to health and disease.

The findings provide guidance for researchers using All of Us data, including how to define menopause-related study populations, design studies and calculate the number of participants needed to answer important research questions.

More broadly, the researchers say the findings point to a fundamental gap in how women's health information is collected.

"We have an enormous opportunity to use large-scale datasets to understand women's health across the menopause transition and to identify who may be at greater risk for disease," said Hendricks. "But we need to make sure that the information researchers need is actually being collected. We must do a better job of capturing women's health information, including reproductive health and measures related to menopause."

Better menopause data could strengthen future research

As the NIH All of Us Research Program continues to grow, more complete and consistent collection of menopause and reproductive health information could help researchers better understand how the menopause transition relates to health and disease.

Improving the availability of this information could also help researchers investigate how factors such as age at menopause relate to disease risk and health outcomes across diverse populations and ultimately contribute to better care for millions of women.

Publication details

Jack W. Staples et al, Menopause in the All of Us Research Program: a descriptive summary of electronic health record and survey response across sociodemographic characteristics, Menopause (2026). DOI: 10.1097/gme.0000000000002884

Journal information: Menopause

Key medical concepts

Menopause

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Obstetrics & gynecologyWomen's healthReproductive health Provided by University of Colorado Anschutz Who's behind this story?

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