Bringing electronic patient records into health professional education: software architecture and implementation

This paper describes the implementation of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) which has been redesigned specifically for the purposes of teaching medical and other health professional students. Currently available EMR software is designed specifically for use in actual practice settings and not for the needs of students and educators. The authors identified many unique requirements of an EMR in order to satisfy the educational goals unique to the electronic medium. This paper describes the specific architecture and many of the unique features of the EMR implemented for the University of British Columbia (UBC) Medical School program for teaching medical students. This implementation describes 200 participating students participating in a hands-on use of an EMR with a single standardized patient case. The participating students were distributed across three physical sites in the Province of British Columbia UBC curricula in December, 2007.