Casebook: a virtual patient iPad application for teaching decision-making through the use of electronic health records

Background Virtual Patients are a well-known and widely used form of interactive software used to simulate aspects of patient care that students are increasingly less likely to encounter during their studies. However, to take full advantage of the benefits of using Virtual Patients, students should have access to multitudes of cases. In order to promote the creation of collections of cases, a tablet application was developed which makes use of electronic health records as material for Virtual Patient cases. Because electronic health records are abundantly available on hospital information systems, this results in much material for the basis of case creation.