Integrating the Electronic Health Record into Education: Models, Issues and Considerations for Training Biomedical Engineers

The use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems is increasing worldwide. Electronic health records (EHRs) are electronic repositories of a patient’s health information and their encounters with the health care system over a lifetime (Shortliffe & Cimino, 2006). Internationally, there has been a push to implement such systems worldwide. However, adoption rates of EHRs continue to remain low in North America, and biomedical engineers are encountering many challenges associated with integrating EHRs into health care work settings. This is especially the case when medical devices and other healthcare equipment (e.g. cardiac monitors, smart beds and intravenous pumps) are integrated into EHRs. To improve adoption rates and student ability to seamlessly introduce this technology, there is need to provide greater EHR experience and exposure to the problems associated with EHR use and to solve some of the real-world EHR related challenges by developing creative solutions. Our recent work in the area of health IT and health professional educational curricula (i.e. in medicine, nursing, allied health and health/biomedical informatics) demonstrates that there is a need for biomedical engineers to learn about several areas at the intersection of medical device usage by health professionals and EHRs: (1) healthcare systems analysis and design, (2) usability of health care information systems, (3) interoperability of EHRs and (4) implementation of differing configurations of medical devices and EHRs to support clinical work. The purpose of this paper will be to describe our experiences to date in using an EHR portal in the classroom setting to teach individuals about these key aspects of EHR design and implementation in hospital settings (where biomedical engineers are typically employed). In the next section of this paper we define and describe how we have introduced EHRs into education, using a novel Web portal. Following this, we describe how we have integrated exposure to differing EHRs in the classroom setting to a range of students (i.e. from medical students to health informatics students). As noted above, the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems in hospitals is increasing. Information technology, health and biomedical engineering professionals are encountering a variety of complex problems in integrating EHRs into healthcare work settings. For example, integrating EHRs, medical devices and health care equipment can be a difficult undertaking. To improve student ability to effectively design, develop, implement and work with EHRs