Review published in JMIR, seeks to understand strategies the most effective educational approaches to enable health care providers to optimally use health information systems.
The implementation of new health information systems (HIS) requires training of health care personnel and a major digital literacy strategy. The study, “An Education Framework for Effective Implementation of a Health Information System: Scoping Review,” published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research by Canadian researchers and clinicians, aimed to “understand the most effective educational strategies and approaches to enable health care providers to optimally use an HIS.”
The researchers define HIS as “a system designed to integrate data collection, processing, and reporting and the use of health information to influence policy making and improve health service effectiveness and efficiency.” These systems have been proposed in an organizational approach, seeking quality transformation in health services to provide greater patient safety and also reduce health care costs.
One of the HIS application objectives is to facilitate the exchange of health information between professionals, so that the medical care provided is comprehensive. However, there are several challenges for its implementation, such as the staff´s lack of familiarity in the adoption of digital technologies, so it is important to educate healthcare providers at each level of care and in all areas of the health system, and thus take full advantage of the HIS and apply the technologies efficiently.
The review conducted by the Canadian researchers applied a search method for articles and studies on education and HIS. They searched Ovad MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, EBSCO Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature and EBSCO Education Resources Information Center. The selected studies were then systematically reviewed and analyzed through a qualitative thematic analysis.
A total of 3,539 studies were reviewed and finally 17 were included for final data extraction. “The literature on the most effective approaches to enable health care providers to optimally use an HIS emphasized the importance of investing in engaging and understanding learners in the clinical context, maximizing the transfer of learning to care, and designing continuous and agile evaluation to meet the emerging demands of the clinical environment,” they explain in the publication.
The articles met the following criteria:
- Examined educational approaches (ie, classroom, instructor-led, web-based training, e-learning, and hybrid learning).
- Discussed HIS systems (EMR, EHR, Clinical Information system, etc).
- Discussed the effectiveness of different approaches in educating staff to use the HIS.
- Described an educational program related to HIS.
- Ensured education be conducted in a hospital setting.
The three main themes across the various educational approaches reviewed were: investing in engaging and understanding learners in the clinical context; maximizing the transfer of learning to care; and continuous, agile assessment designed to meet the emerging demands of the clinical environment.
“This study supports the development of an HIS learning framework that educators can use to guide the design and development of HIS education and training during and postimplementation,” concluded the authors. To read the full report click on the following link: https://www.jmir.org/2021/2/e24691/
