Abstract—In the last few years, the use of information
technology to improve the quality of healthcare services has
challenged healthcare organizations to adjust to these new
developments. Consequently, there is an increasing demand to
prepare health informatics professionals to be a driving force in
the adoption and implementation of health information
technology projects. This paper presents the results of an
exploratory study conducted to gain insight into the potential
benefits and challenges related to the integration of an
educational health information system into an introductory
course on health informatics. The study aims to achieve an
effective framework for embedding educational software into
undergraduate health informatics courses. The students who
participated in this study used the system to gain practical
experience with how a health informatics system performs its
core functions and to discover the importance of integration
between different parts of the system. The results of the study
revealed that integrating health informatics software into
undergraduate courses has positive impacts on the learning
process. However, the study identified various barriers that
should be taken into consideration to achieve educationally
effective integration of health informatics software into the
teaching environment.
Index Terms—Health informatics education, virtual training,
educational software.
Ali H. Alharbi is with the Department of Health Informatics, Qassim
University, Bukairiyah, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: ahhrbie@qu.edu.sa).
Cite: Ali H. Alharbi, "Towards an Effective Framework for Integrating Educational Software into Health Informatics Curricula," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 76-81, 2017.