Integrating Electronic Health Records into Medical Education: Considerations, Challenges, and Future Directions

Electronic health records (EHRs) and related health information technologies are currently being implemented worldwide. Indeed, it is expected that electronic medical records (EMRs) will eventually become routinely used by all physicians. Such information technology promises to not only revolutionize and modernize health-care practice but also change medical education as new approaches to integrating this technology into the undergraduate education of physicians become a requirement. Despite the emerging importance that EMRs play in health care, there is little published work describing efforts to integrate this technology into medical curricula. This chapter first describes the need to bring electronic medical records into undergraduate medical education, including a review of the challenges faced in doing so. Discussed next is a project that was undertaken to integrate the use of EMRs into a problem-based module of an undergraduate medical education program. This involved providing over 200 medical students and faculty (across three geographically dispersed sites) with information about the patient “case of the week” via an EMR that was specifically modified for use in medical education. The intent of the project was to teach medical students about key aspects of the EMR itself as it was used to support problem-based medical education. Results indicated that EMR technology can be usefully integrated into problem-based medical education. Implications, challenges, and future extension of the work are also discussed.