Usefulness of the “Mobile Interactive Pharmacy Education Enhancement Resource” (miPEER) Mobile Web-App as a Learning Tool for Electronic Health Records
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Abstract
Introduction:
Formal electronic health record (EHR)-related training is lacking in the curricula of many pharmacy schools, thus resulting in a lack of skills base in pharmacy graduates. These newly-practicing pharmacists may encounter difficulties in using EHRs to obtain relevant patient health information (PHI) to manage their patients well, which in turn can predispose patients to other medical errors and drug-related problems. Mobile apps provide a learner-centred environment to train students on EHRs and extraction of relevant PHI. The “Mobile Interactive Pharmacy Education Enhancement Resource” (miPEER) mobile web-app, containing a mock-EHR feature, was developed for this purpose and a user-perception study conducted to determine its usefulness as a learning tool.
Methods:
miPEER was developed in-house at the Pharmacy Department, National University of Singapore, through programming scripts. Two online surveys were conducted from August-November 2013. The surveys determined usage patterns and adaptability of miPEER by the pharmacy undergraduates, and their perceptions on its usefulness as a learning tool. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, Fisher’s exact and Mann-Whitney U tests were used for statistical analysis.
Results:
miPEER contained 3 core features – “Virtual Patient Records (VPR)”, “Case Questions” and “Druglist”. The VPR consisted of mock PHI which simulated those of EHRs, so that students could learn how to extract relevant information to solve counseling scenarios in the “Case Questions”. The “Druglist” provided hyperlinks to drug information of the most frequently-used prescription-only, pharmacy-only and general sales list medications used in Singapore. Response rates for the first survey varied from 50.0-85.3% over 3 weeks (N=150). Majority used miPEER in a study environment (84.3%). Students became more familiar with miPEER over time, with an increase to 20.0% using it while traveling. The most useful Virtual Patient Record parameter was “Medical History” (85.8%). Over half agreed that miPEER gave them insights to an EHR system (68.7%) and enabled them to understand the types of PHI available in EHRs (71.8%). More students had a better understanding of EHRs after using miPEER (16.9% versus 8.4%, p=0.046), and agreed that miPEER was a useful learning tool (19.2% versus 6.2%, p=0.002).
Conclusion:
miPEER is a web-app that trains students to extract relevant PHI from EHRs to solve clinical cases. Mobile apps, such as miPEER, are potentially useful to train new generations of digitally competent pharmacists to improve the quality of pharmaceutical care.
Formal electronic health record (EHR)-related training is lacking in the curricula of many pharmacy schools, thus resulting in a lack of skills base in pharmacy graduates. These newly-practicing pharmacists may encounter difficulties in using EHRs to obtain relevant patient health information (PHI) to manage their patients well, which in turn can predispose patients to other medical errors and drug-related problems. Mobile apps provide a learner-centred environment to train students on EHRs and extraction of relevant PHI. The “Mobile Interactive Pharmacy Education Enhancement Resource” (miPEER) mobile web-app, containing a mock-EHR feature, was developed for this purpose and a user-perception study conducted to determine its usefulness as a learning tool.
Methods:
miPEER was developed in-house at the Pharmacy Department, National University of Singapore, through programming scripts. Two online surveys were conducted from August-November 2013. The surveys determined usage patterns and adaptability of miPEER by the pharmacy undergraduates, and their perceptions on its usefulness as a learning tool. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, Fisher’s exact and Mann-Whitney U tests were used for statistical analysis.
Results:
miPEER contained 3 core features – “Virtual Patient Records (VPR)”, “Case Questions” and “Druglist”. The VPR consisted of mock PHI which simulated those of EHRs, so that students could learn how to extract relevant information to solve counseling scenarios in the “Case Questions”. The “Druglist” provided hyperlinks to drug information of the most frequently-used prescription-only, pharmacy-only and general sales list medications used in Singapore. Response rates for the first survey varied from 50.0-85.3% over 3 weeks (N=150). Majority used miPEER in a study environment (84.3%). Students became more familiar with miPEER over time, with an increase to 20.0% using it while traveling. The most useful Virtual Patient Record parameter was “Medical History” (85.8%). Over half agreed that miPEER gave them insights to an EHR system (68.7%) and enabled them to understand the types of PHI available in EHRs (71.8%). More students had a better understanding of EHRs after using miPEER (16.9% versus 8.4%, p=0.046), and agreed that miPEER was a useful learning tool (19.2% versus 6.2%, p=0.002).
Conclusion:
miPEER is a web-app that trains students to extract relevant PHI from EHRs to solve clinical cases. Mobile apps, such as miPEER, are potentially useful to train new generations of digitally competent pharmacists to improve the quality of pharmaceutical care.
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