Educational Electronic Health Records at the University of Victoria: Challenges, Recommendations and Lessons Learned

There has been an acknowledged need for the integration of health technologies such as the electronic health record system (EHR) into health professional education. At the University of Victoria we have been experimenting with different models, architectures and applications of educational EHRs in the context of training health informatics, medical, and nursing students who will ultimately use this technology in their daily practice upon graduation. Our initial work involved the development of a Web-based portal that contained a number of open source EHRs and is described in this paper. In addition to the technical side, considerations around pedagogy and how best to integrate such technology into the classroom and educational experience are discussed. Finally, challenges and lessons learned from our decade of work in this area are discussed.