What Features Should a Medical Educational Software Have?

What Can Medical Educational Software Do?

Teaching technologies are revolutionizing medical education and the way in which helping professionals practice.  Now, in any medical practice, software can organize and manage a large variety of information all in one platform.  Medical educational software can be utilized to store patient information and deliver educational trainings to patients on their various health conditions.  Additionally, medical software is utilized to deliver training programs online to practitioners who must remain up to date on certifications and the latest treatments.  Online administration allows helping professionals to take training programs outside of the office at a unique time that fits into their busy schedules.

Before, this sort of software was only available by a service hosted on a local server.  These platforms were expensive and required a significant amount of maintenance.  Now, with the invention of cloud technology, medical practices can host information in the cloud safely and spend much less time and money maintaining their medical software (Our Thought Leaders, 2017).  Below I will share with you a variety of top features that medical educational software should provide.

Top Features of Medical Educational Software

1. Advanced Security

• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established a national standard for the confidentiality of patient health information (OfficeSafe, 2016). If you are using a medical educational software that stores patient information, it is vital that there are protections and protocols in place to prevent breaches and cyberattacks.
• Implement a medical educational software with technical safeguards.
  • Utilize a medical educational software where electronic protected health information (ePHI) can only be accessed with passwords, with automatic logoff after a certain period of inactivity (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2013).
  • Have a username and/or number for tracking user identity and activity on health servers with ePHI to hold users of the medical practice accountable for misconduct (Demarco & Schein, 2018).
  • Implement software or procedures to record and analyze activity in systems with ePHI (HHS, 2013).
  • Implement a medical educational software where ePHI is not improperly altered or destroyed with password protected portals to edit information (HHS, 2013).

2. Assessment Capabilities

• A medical educational software should have the capability to deliver assessments to ensure that learners are properly retaining information presented during trainings. These assessments should include multiple choice, true/false, short answer, and/ yes/no questions so that learners are prompted to recall and recognize information given a variety of prompts and question types.
• Scoring features should also be comprehensive. Course or exam administrators should be able to set unique values for different question types and unique values for different modules.  This intensifies the rigor of the program by making harder question types or modules worth more, ensuring that learners are competent in areas that matter most.
• Other scoring features that should be offered in a rigorous medical educational software include a custom minimum passing score, time limits, and retakes. Anyone who meets or exceeds the minimum passing score will receive a certificate, while those that do not meet benchmark requirements will not be sent a certificate.

Medical Professionals and Patients Can Complete Medical Educational Software Assessments on Tablet Devices

3. Notification System

• It is vital for doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, and other helping professionals within your organization to stay on schedule when it comes time to renew their certifications. When looking for a medical educational software, ensure that there is a notification system in place that sends reminders to practitioners to complete their certificate programs before deadlines approach.  This way, all deadlines are sure to be met and no helping professionals are practicing without the proper certifications.
• Additionally, if your medical educational software is meant to be accessed by patients as well, it increases efficiency in your practice to have your software notify patients when they are due for appointments. Regular checkups enable optimal preventative care (SelectHub, n.d.).

4. Demographic Information Storage

• In healthcare, it is especially vital to address and store demographic information of patients of your institution. Store information such as age, race/ethnicity, degree of support from support network, income, and so on.  Why?  Demographic factors often influence the degree to which people engage in health behaviors, so it is important to keep track of these factors and ensure that the quality of care given does not differ from culture to culture.  Ensure that everyone is equally extended helpful resources and increase cultural awareness and competence of your medical staff (Mio, Barker, & Tumambing, 2012).

5. Strong Reporting Capabilities

• In order to ensure that the medical educational software is being utilized effectively, it is imperative that patient and professional learning outcomes of training programs be tracked for analysis (Slack, 2017).
• Transfer learning outcome data from training programs into PDF orfiles and export that information for in-depth reporting or statistical analyses. Determine the validity of the assessment procedures within training programs, and work to strengthen areas within programs determined to be weaker than others .
• If your medical educational software supports multimedia integrations—such as video files, audio files, PowerPoint, PDFs, images, or any other types of files—track the degree to which users engage with these materials. If reports show that students are not viewing videos adequately, it might make sense to remove that material and try to incorporate another, hopefully more engaging, educational resource.  Reporting features not only help strengthen the assessment portions of courses, but they also help optimize the materials utilized within course modules to improve learner engagement (Slack, 2017).

References

Demarco, A., & Schein, H. (2018, April 11). Practice management software: 5 key features [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.micromd.com/blogmd/practice-management-software-5-key-features/

Mio, J. S., Barker, L. A., & Tumambing, J. S. (2012). Multicultural psychology: Understanding our diverse communities (3rd ed.). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

OfficeSafe. (2016, September 19). HIPAA training: What is required for HIPAA compliance [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9znUYvVO4A

Our Thought Leaders. (2017, June 13). 3 reasons why cloud computing makes it easier on hospital administrators [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://hitconsultant.net/2017/06/13/cloud-computing-hospital-administrators/

SelectHub. (n.d.). The big medical office software features list [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://selecthub.com/medical-software/medical-office-software-features/

Slack, A. (2017, August 22). 7 Essential features your continuing medical education software should have [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.mededwebs.com/blog/7-essential-features-and-functions-your-continuing-medical-education-software-should-have

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013, July 26). Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/security/laws-regulations/index.html