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Ishir Bhan, MD and Carl Blesius, MD
Apprentice is a set of tools that integrates into an existing medical record system at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). It combines clinical data, tools for collaborative task-management, and an interactive educational platform. Apprentice makes this information available to providers in a handheld format to bring knowledge and education to the bedside. Apprentice is incorporated into preexisting clinical and educational computer systems within a large academic medical center.
In the era of restricted work hours and increasingly demanding clinical care, maintaining effective communication between providers, increasing efficiency, and providing on-demand access to relevant educational materials becomes of critical importance. Apprentice is a platform for patient care being developed at the MGH Laboratory of Computer Science. It creates a framework for the integration of patient data with tools for collaboration and education. Apprentice:mobile allows handheld devices such as the Palm Treo to access resources and knowledge wirelessly from any location. This platform is particularly well suited for residents or staff members who may not have immediate access to a computer at the point of care (such as a patient’s room). Apprentice:web provides all the functionality of Apprentice:mobile for desktop access and is suited for rapid data entry (e.g. for preparing for handoffs of care and creating teaching documents). Together, these components help academic medical programs meet the dual needs of high quality patient care and sustainable teaching and education in an increasingly time-driven environment. Apprentice consists of three main components.
Apprentice:web is the clinical software used by providers to access patient lists, laboratory results, medication lists, and clinical notes. Providers can subscribe to and unsubscribe from patient lists. They can collaboratively add, remove, and check-off patient-oriented tasks.
Apprentice:mobile is a focused version of Apprentice that extracts the most important elements from Apprentice for use on a PDA or smartphone. Using Sybase’s M-Business server and software, users can synchronize or directly connect to the Apprentice server and download data to their handheld device. Integrated security ensures password-protected access in both the online or offline modes.
Apprentice:hub is a website dedicated to medical education built on the open source software toolkit .LRN (“dot-learn”). It supports multiple learning communities (e.g. a medical residency program) with a user and community specific portal that includes a calendar, integrated streaming conference videos, discussion forums, announcements, and other applications. Apprentice:hub includes an integrated Wiki that allows faculty, residents, and students to add and edit learning material that can be searched, tagged, and hyperlinked.