Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) is working with Epic Systems Corporation (Verona, Wisc.) to advance research and education in biomedical and health informatics.
OSHU is the first care academic informatics provider organization to partner with Epic, using the vendor's EpicCare electronic health record (EHR) system and associated tools for the program. The onus behind this partnership is to develop and accelerate practice use of EHR technology and hands-on learning. It will include laboratory environments of EpicCare at OHSU both focused on research and the other on education.
"Every student of informatics who aspires to work professionally in the field should have experience with a state-of-the-art electronic health record system, including back-end functionality,” William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of OHSU's Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, who directs OHSU educational programs in biomedical informatics, said in a statement. "This partnership provides the opportunity for our students, including those in our distance learning program, to obtain such experience. It also provides a rich research environment for our faculty and students who use informatics to improve health, health care delivery and clinical and translational research.”
The research environment will allow OSHU faculty and students access to Epic source code, allowing them investigate usability, analytics, simulation, interoperability, and patient safety. The education environment will allow students in the graduate program to access EpicCare for learning purposes, and they'll participate in educational activities such as configuring screens, implementing clinical decision support, and generating reports as well as performing other front-end and back-end activities.
The lab will open in March of 2014.
