TY - JOUR
T1 - Use of an open-source electronic health record to establish a “virtual hospital”
T2 - A tale of two curricula
AU - Medlock, Stephanie
AU - Ploegmakers, Kim J.
AU - Cornet, Ronald
AU - Pang, Kim Win
N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Roland Schermer for his involvement in creating the Arden Syntax module for OpenMRS, and supporting the introduction of the module into the curriculum. We also thank Bert Lindner for providing virtual machines for the initial implementation. The authors would also like to thank Emily Timmermans for her hard work in translating the synthetic cases from paper descriptions to EHR records, and ensuring that the course material was available on time. We thank the ICT-Education team and especially Jeroen Kroon for organizing the implementation, and the members of ICT services who organized and supported the technical implementation. We also thank the participants of the OpenMRS forum (https://talk.openmrs.org/) who helped with troubleshooting and advice. Comenius project number 405.18865.274. Publisher Copyright: © 2022
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Background: The electronic health record (EHR) is central to medical informatics. Its use is also recognized as an important skill for future clinicians. Typically, medical students' first exposure to an EHR is when they start their clinical internships, and medical informatics students may or may not get experience with an EHR before graduation. We describe the process of implementing an open-source EHR in two curricula: Medicine and Medical informatics. For medical students, the primary goals were to allow students to practice analyzing information from the EHR, creating therapeutic plans, and communicating with their colleagues via the EHR before they start their first clinical rotations. For medical informatics students, the primary goal was to give students hands-on experience with creating decision support in an EHR. Approach: We used the OpenMRS electronic health record with a custom decision support module based on Arden Syntax. Medical students needed a secure, stable environment to practice medical reasoning. Medical informatics students needed a more isolated system to experiment with the EHR's internal configuration. Both student groups needed synthetic patient cases that were realistic, but in different aspects. For medical students, it is essential that these cases are clinically consistent, and events unfold in a logical order. By contrast, synthetic data for medical informatics students should mimic the data quality problems found in real patient data. Outcomes: Medical informatics students show more mature reasoning about data quality issues and workflow integration than prior to using the EHR. Comments on both course evaluations have been positive, including comments on how working with a real-world EHR provides a realistic experience. Conclusion: The open-source EHR OpenMRS has proven to be a valuable addition to both the medicine and medical informatics curriculum. Both sets of students experience use of the EHR as giving them valuable, realistic learning experiences.
AB - Background: The electronic health record (EHR) is central to medical informatics. Its use is also recognized as an important skill for future clinicians. Typically, medical students' first exposure to an EHR is when they start their clinical internships, and medical informatics students may or may not get experience with an EHR before graduation. We describe the process of implementing an open-source EHR in two curricula: Medicine and Medical informatics. For medical students, the primary goals were to allow students to practice analyzing information from the EHR, creating therapeutic plans, and communicating with their colleagues via the EHR before they start their first clinical rotations. For medical informatics students, the primary goal was to give students hands-on experience with creating decision support in an EHR. Approach: We used the OpenMRS electronic health record with a custom decision support module based on Arden Syntax. Medical students needed a secure, stable environment to practice medical reasoning. Medical informatics students needed a more isolated system to experiment with the EHR's internal configuration. Both student groups needed synthetic patient cases that were realistic, but in different aspects. For medical students, it is essential that these cases are clinically consistent, and events unfold in a logical order. By contrast, synthetic data for medical informatics students should mimic the data quality problems found in real patient data. Outcomes: Medical informatics students show more mature reasoning about data quality issues and workflow integration than prior to using the EHR. Comments on both course evaluations have been positive, including comments on how working with a real-world EHR provides a realistic experience. Conclusion: The open-source EHR OpenMRS has proven to be a valuable addition to both the medicine and medical informatics curriculum. Both sets of students experience use of the EHR as giving them valuable, realistic learning experiences.
KW - Clinical decision support systems
KW - Education
KW - Electronic health record
KW - Electronic patient record
KW - Libre, free and open source software
KW - Medical education
KW - Medical informatics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141309199&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104907
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104907
M3 - Article
C2 - 36347140
SN - 1386-5056
VL - 169
JO - International Journal of Medical Informatics
JF - International Journal of Medical Informatics
M1 - 104907
ER -