MedAffinity is an electronic health records software company headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida. Founded in 2005, the company software is designed with a specific interface that looks, acts and feels like a real document to make the record keeping process seem as natural as possible. The goal of the implementation of this interface is to set a new standard for flexibility, functionality and user-friendly design across medical simulation EHRs.
With the power of a clinical EHR, MedAffinity’s clinical backbone is specially adapted for education. The company became a federally certified EHR in 2012, and in 2014 began working with Tallahassee Community College to adapt the EHR software for academic use. Most recently, in 2015, CAE Healthcare’s LearningSpace (a powerful simulation center management solution for medical schools, nurse education programs, allied health and hospital-based simulation programs) successfully integrated with the MedAffinity EHR platform for education.
MedAffinity has continuously sought to retain all the functionality required for a medical practice, and says measures to perfect the software have never stopped. The company’s EHR for education has continued to tailor the software to the unique demands of the educational sector. With specific educational needs in mind, company software can be carefully modified to empower each instructor, and while solving problems often associated with the healthcare simulation environment as a whole.
MedAffinity Health Informatics
According to MedAffinity, the rapidly expanding field of health informatics is transforming the work of healthcare professionals everywhere. Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics research, growth in the health information technology sector is projected to roughly double the average growth rate across all occupations in the U.S. For this reason, MedAffinity stresses that EHRs and related systems have become the backbone of institutions’ data management. This means that EHR systems are increasingly integral components of healthcare education. MedAffinity EHR seeks to use the company platform to “get ahead of the game” and best prepare learners for the digital future.
At MedAffinity, the belief is that educational institutions should not be forced to settle for the rigid, stripped-down tools provided by larger, one-size-fits-all EHRs for teaching Informatics. The company believes that these stripped-down EHRs create unnecessary headaches for administrations and ill prepare learners for real-world medical care.
This notion is the driving force behind MedAffinity’s custom, yet easy-to-use methods for ensuring that every learner graduates with a clear understanding of health informatics.
Software Design from MedAffinity
A flexible interface allows MedAffinity to easily adapt new documentation requirements without delays, costly upgrades or additional custom configuration associated with common EHR alternatives. Using data-driven computing, the software is able to deliver powerful data capture and speed up the overall documentation process. Simultaneously, intuitive word processing enables data to be captured with every click.
Users can configure MedAffinity to meet the needs of their faculty by placing their existing document-style materials directly into our system. The company is able to easily adapt to new documentation and curriculum requirements without any of the delays, expensive upgrades or convoluted configurations associated with some possible alternatives. This adaption to new content, ideas and standards, means the EHR does not dictate the way an entire faculty must teach.
Another focus of MedAffinity is on the ability for educational EHR to allow learners to invest their time in acquiring proper knowledge regarding how to best care for people, while avoiding software wrangling. Instead of clinical simulation staff having to spend time performing repetitive item-by-item deletion after each simulation session, MedAffinity EHR retains the full, complete functionality demanded by modern medical practice.
MedAffinity EHR stretches beyond the simulation center environment to classroom case studies, informatics and more. By implementing this software across educational curriculums, faculty and administrators can have the most impact in deciding what and how their learners gain applicable industry information.
By providing innovative, intuitive and powerful electronic health records software, MedAffinity hopes to be able to relay quality training measures to the next generation of healthcare practitioners and clinicians in simulation labs. The goal is to help learners gain instruction in a educational simulation environment without compromising the experience of using “real-world EHR.”
As the medical simulation world expands and evolves, Limbs & Things has taken task trainers around the world to a huge variety of medical simulation conferences, exhibitions and shows, including those hosted by SimGHOSTS, INACSL, ASPiH, SESAM, or the International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSiH).
MedAffinity Features
MedAffinity’s powerful summaries allow learners to dive right into course and subject material by making the information they need to see easy to view. Learners do not need to waste time aimlessly searching for information, because the software’s effortless summary system allows them to quickly select summary boxes to rapidly fill out their charts. Learners can also roll their mouse over documents in the chart to instantly view any particular item in full detail.
Eliminating the need to “start from scratch,” MedAffinity’s flexible template builder allows faculty to use the simulation scenarios they already have by importing them into the software. MedAffinity vows to teach faculty members to use straightforward tools for importing each scenario into the software system. The EHR simulator company will also teach users how to customize progress notes and other elements the instructor prefers.
With these adaptation capabilities, nursing simulation instructors and other clinical faculty can also change wording and modify templates, rearrange chart summaries to emphasize specific aspects of the patient chart and more. This helps instructors to make scenario adjustments themselves, eliminating the need to spend time and money on custom programming or support calls.
To help further ensure that faculty are not limited to static scenarios, MedAffinity offers a powerful scenario editor. The live scenario editing allows instructors to dynamically modify scenarios in real-time during class. With a “back to start” feature, instructors can quickly and efficiently reset a scenario for the next class, with no manual deletion required.
With an effortless tap-to-select menu, the company combines the strengths of a word processor. The single-screen charting interface and prebuilt staged templates let users enter large amounts of patient data quickly and efficiently. Instructors report that learners are able to understand and use the MedAffinity system in about 15 minutes.
Other MedAffinity features, so as robust documentation retrieval and search tools, allow faculty to quickly and efficiently review EHR training documentation authored by their learners. The software further provides faculty with powerful search tools to easily find documents authored within specific date ranges, in particular courses, authored by a particular learner for that containing particular criteria.
Within the MedAffinity EMR, barcode-enabled electronic Medical Administration Record (eMAR) is built right into each patient chart. The eMAR can use the sim drugs the facilitator already has, including Demo-Dose, Practi-Meds or their own. There’s no need for specialized readers, as standard, inexpensive barcode readers work with this system.
