This project is now complete. 

Building healthcare student competencies

In 2014, a group of instructors from institutions across the province analyzed existing electronic health record (EHR) and clinical systems to identify opportunities to include them in the current healthcare curriculum. The group developed a rubric to outline the technical and functional requirements, which led to the development of an open textbook: Health Case Studies. The open textbook was the first milestone in their effort to build an open-source, pilot-ready prototype to provide healthcare learners with hands-on experience with an EHR system in classrooms and simulation labs.

Electronic health records (EHR)

The cornerstone of the province’s eHealth strategy, EHRs provide a secure and private portfolio of a patient’s health history and care within the provincial health system. Ensuring that current students within healthcare programs have experiential learning with appropriately inputting, accessing, retrieving, and synthesizing electronic health data will provide them with the competencies required to safely deliver high-quality, patient-centred care.

Educational electronic health record system (EdEHR) project

In 2017, BCcampus worked with the project collaborators to create a proposal to secure funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training to build on the research and development they had completed. The collaborative effort was successful and the group initiated a project for the development of a resource that could be piloted and evaluated by post-secondary institutions across B.C.

BCcampus managed the project develop a pilot-ready prototype and document a strategy for long-term sustainability.  The EdEHR project completed in 2019 with in-classroom piloting of the prototype.

EdEHR Service

Following project completion, the EdEHR software developer brought together a team that includes multi-disciplinary educators from across BC post-secondary institutions to guide and grow the prototype software into a Software as a Service offering.  See https://edehr.org/ to learn more about how your institution can use the service to deliver EHR learning opportunities to your students.

The open-source software code is available on GitHub.