Beyond information retrieval and electronic health record use: competencies in clinical informatics for medical education

Abstract

Physicians in the 21st century will increasingly interact in diverse ways with information systems, requiring competence in many aspects of clinical informatics. In recent years, many medical school curricula have added content in information retrieval (search) and basic use of the electronic health record. However, this omits the growing number of other ways that physicians are interacting with information that includes activities such as clinical decision support, quality measurement and improvement, personal health records, telemedicine, and personalized medicine. We describe a process whereby six faculty members representing different perspectives came together to define competencies in clinical informatics for a curriculum transformation process occurring at Oregon Health & Science University. From the broad competencies, we also developed specific learning objectives and milestones, an implementation schedule, and mapping to general competency domains. We present our work to encourage debate and refinement as well as facilitate evaluation in this area.

eHealth in integrated care programs for people with multimorbidity in Europe: Insights from the ICARE4EU project

“…eHealth development over the last decades included mainly the implementation of health informatics in hospitals, primary care and institutional settings, with use of patients' Electronic Health Records (EHRs) [12][13][14]; the use of telemedicine and telehealth services allowing remote monitoring of chronic conditions [15,16]; the availability of some intelligent/assistive technologies at home to increase independency and safety of the patients [17] and support for the family caregivers [18,19]. Concerning telecare for older people, estimated levels of implementation of social alarms and similar solutions varied across countries, with relatively high values in the United Kingdom and Ireland (14-16% of older people covered), mediumhigh in Denmark, Finland and Sweden (6-10%), and low coverage in a great part of the remaining countries (less than 3%).…”

“…There is some evidence showing benefits of using eHealth [12,15,17,19]. For instance, eHealth applications enable improving coordination/integration and continuity of care between professionals by enhanced opportunities for digital data sharing, communication and consultation at a distance, which also reduces healthcare utilization costs [22].…”

Awareness and Use of Electronic Health Records in Entry-Level Occupational Therapy and Occupational Therapy Assistant Curricula

“…The authors encourage faculty to adopt a constructivist perspective using experiential, contextual, collaborative, and student-centered teaching strategies for EHR competency. Hersh et al (2014) recognized the need to define EHR competencies in medical education. (Miller, Budd, Landers, & Langham, 2015).…”

Patient-Centered Models of Care: Closing the Gaps in Physician Readiness

“…Clinical informatics is now a robust field, and has its own set of competencies and fellowships as of 2014. 9 Yet instruction around IT and electronic health records (EHR) in undergraduate medical education lacks standardization and integration. 9 Trainees are not routinely provided with guidance on how to make the EHR an effective tool for communication.…”

“…9 Yet instruction around IT and electronic health records (EHR) in undergraduate medical education lacks standardization and integration. 9 Trainees are not routinely provided with guidance on how to make the EHR an effective tool for communication. A lack of clear expectations on what constitutes high quality documentation has instead led to poorly constructed templates and "copy-paste" functions that hamper both patient care and the development of independent clinical reasoning.…”