Wolters Kluwer Health’s unit Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) today announced the acquisition of iCare LLC, makers of iCare EMR, an educational Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software program. iCare EMR integrates a simulated electronic medical record into a learning tool for students to prepare future nurses for the demands of the evolving healthcare climate in the 21st century. The deal allows Wolters Kluwer Health to broaden its market-leading portfolio of EMR documentation and simulation support tools for nursing students, instructors and professionals.
The iCare EMR learning tool trains nursing students to manage the complex challenges of documenting care, patient safety, compliance and hospital efficiency. Designed to mirror the functionality of commercially available EMRs, iCare allows students to learn about EMR systems within the framework of their current educational curriculum both in the classroom and simulation environments.
“Currently, there are more than 3,000 nursing schools in the U.S., and only one percent of them provide students with access to EMRs,” said Frank Mortimer, publisher for Nursing Education at Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional & Education. “This acquisition is an example of our continued commitment to provide nurses and educators with better evidence-based nursing practice information and resources, improving the quality of both instruction and patient care.”
Nursing students can record and retrieve data pertinent to “care,” such as physical assessments, vital signs and medication administration. Within the simulation education environment, nursing students can electronically document their “care” and then have that record available to them in all phases of the nursing curriculum. Nursing faculty can also build their own patient-care scenarios and evaluate students on documentation of physical assessments as well as general EMR documentation skills.
“iCare was built from the clinician’s and educator’s perspectives to provide an exceptionally intuitive and user-friendly, educationally-based EMR,” said Tami Wyatt, PhD, RN, CNE and iCare co-founder. “iCare provides nursing students exposure in the use of health information technology at a time when accurate electronic documentation and the timely delivery of evidenced-based nursing care at the patient’s bedside are crucial.”
iCare Academic LLC is a Tennessee-based software company founded by professionals in the nursing education field dedicated to researching and designing an EMR for use in the educational environment. Like Wolters Kluwer Health, iCare’s goal is to enhance the educational experiences of nursing students and better prepare them for successful careers in healthcare. The combination of iCare and Wolters Kluwer Health’s Nursing Education provides a strong portfolio of products designed to more closely link what is learned in the classroom with what is required on the job.
“The acquisition of iCare will allow instructors and students to have complete integration of the textbook, the simulation lab and the classroom,” said John J. Jordan, digital acquisitions editor for Nursing Education at Wolters Kluwer Health. “We see the iCare EMR as a key asset in our strategy to continuously evolve our education curriculum and tools and provide a key interface for future simulation products.”
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