Implementation and justification of a curriculum-wide electronic health record platform

In order to develop practice-ready pharmacists as mandated by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education Accreditation Standards, exposing students to health information technologies used in clinical practice, like electronic health records (EHRs), is imperative. While the benefits of using EHRs have been described in the literature, limited information or guidance exists on how these tools can incorporate various activities and topics to be implemented throughout an entire curriculum. The purpose of this report is to describe the curriculum-wide implementation of a simulated EHR software, including the novel learning experiences and costs incurred by the college.

The EHR was implemented in various courses across the pharmacy school curriculum in the first, second, and third professional years.

During the final year of implementation, the EHR platform was utilized in each of the three didactic years of the pharmacy program. Twenty-two faculty members created cases using the EHR platform. These cases were used across 16 courses and were accessed by students 7191 times during the implementation process. The cost per use of the EHR platform was approximately half that of the most frequently used electronic learning database used in the program.

In the three years since its inception, the EHR has been highly utilized as evidenced by the overall number of experiences for students, the variety of experiences, and the number of faculty who used the EHR in their course.