It’s a win-win partnership for UWM. Norris Health Center and the College of Health Sciences’ Health Informatics and Administration program are working together to select an electronic medical records (EMR) system for the center.
A class for master’s and Ph.D. students, the Norris Student Health Center (NHC) EMR Practicum began in spring 2011 as a way to provide these biomedical and health informatics students with the opportunity to work together on a “real-world” project.
“This joint project has worked even better than was imagined as an effort to provide IT expertise to NHC while exposing students to the vagaries of a real-world project,” says Mary Anne Wawrzyn, who co-directs the practicum with Timothy Patrick, associate professor and chair of Health Informatics and Administration. “The students have focused on issues critical to Norris’s selection and implementation process in a way that has been both instructive to the students and advantageous to the NHC staff.”
Wawrzyn is the former director of the pharmacy at NHC and associate lecturer in health informatics and administration. A key to this partnership has been the support of NHC Director Dr. Julie Bonner and Director of Clinical Services Dr. Aamir Siddiqi.
“We have been excited in developing this partnership and providing real-life experience to our students. The students have provided us with excellent products and tools which have made it easy for us at NHC to be objective and comparative in making our EMR selection,” says Siddiqi.
Patrick outlined the course of action for the practicum, which has been limited to 10 students per semester. “The goal in spring 2011 was for the students to document the current state of operations and information flows of NHC and the organizational culture that drives it. For fall 2011, the goal was to recommend an EMR vendor solution based on the current state analysis.”
The formal request-for-proposal process is now being carried forward by NHC staff, and students are concentrating on issues relevant to implementation of the EMR vendor solution.
The project was selected for a presentation by the practicum students on a national level. Several of the students presented a poster at the fall 2011 annual symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). An additional poster is being prepared for submission to the fall 2012 AMIA meeting.
Sean Kewley, a master’s degree student, has been involved with the practicum all three semesters. “Learning how to apply information technology to health care in a traditional classroom setting is great. Learning how to apply that knowledge in an actual clinical setting is indispensable,” says Kewley. “We worked together as a team and achieved our goals according to a realistic, business-driven time frame. My personal takeaway from the experience was confidence in my educational training and my ability to apply that knowledge firsthand.”
