Design and implementation of a novel electronic health records (EHR) system for knowledge sharing at an international medical outreach program field clinic

A prominent medical school in the Southeast United States conducts an active International Medical Outreach Program (IMOP) at multiple international locations. These medical outreach trips provide medical services to those who do not have access to or limited access to health care. Medical students who volunteer to participate in these trips welcome the experiential education experiences. This developmental research study focuses on three IMOP trips to San Cristóbal, Galápagos Islands (Ecuador). Traditional approaches in the dissemination of clinical knowledge, skills, and confidence building for medical students rely on classroom training. In the IMOP experiential trips, knowledge sharing was supported by oral communication with senior clinicians and patients, as well as the transition from a paper-based to a novel custom-built Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Paper-based record systems are cluttered with issues; some include illegible handwriting and missing or incomplete data. A team of health informatics professionals from the university transitioned the paper-based forms to a novel digitalized EHR system. The new novel digitalized EHR system resolved many of the paper-based issues and significantly improved knowledge dissemination among medical students, patients, and clinicians, furthering skills enhancement as well as efficiencies in resource coordination, however, some adjustments in clinical documentation procedures were needed to reduce the volume of missing data entries during the implementation, where a total of 848 adult and pediatric patients were treated over the three IMOP trips documented in this research. This digitalized EHR system enabled a more efficient transfer of knowledge to medical students.